NSM Jukeboxes

I recently purchased 2 Rock-Ola machines and has a pretty easy time
getting them working. A guy recently told me he had 6 NSM jukeboxes
that were complete with all the records and a bunch of spare parts that
he said he would let go for $400. These are older NSM's that play 45
records only. That is about $70 a pop. Are these machines relatively
easy to work on? I was told from an earlier post that these usually
have german writing on the inside of them. Do you think its worth my
time and money to purchase them? I like a good project but don't want
to take on something that is going to give me a hard time.

Any comments greatly appreciated.

WHen they are right, they area a good juke, but when things go wrong, parts
can be a bear to find.
Mike

"dimperio" wrote in message
ups.com...
I recently purchased 2 Rock-Ola machines and has a pretty easy time
getting them working. A guy recently told me he had 6 NSM jukeboxes
that were complete with all the records and a bunch of spare parts that
he said he would let go for $400. These are older NSM's that play 45
records only. That is about $70 a pop. Are these machines relatively
easy to work on? I was told from an earlier post that these usually
have german writing on the inside of them. Do you think its worth my
time and money to purchase them? I like a good project but don't want
to take on something that is going to give me a hard time.

Any comments greatly appreciated.

I went and took a look at the juke boxes this morning. Here is what he
had: 2 NSM Prestige 160's. They had a nice glass front to them with a
curve in the glass, 1 Festival 160, 1 consul ES160, and a NSM or
Rock-ola that I couldn't get at the model number. He also had
something that was about 8 inches thick and maybe 42 inches wide that
had a lot of selections on it but I don't know if it actually had any
hardware in it. He said he thought it was a remote selection thing for
a Rock-ola. Along with this he had 6 spare mechanisms that are the main
mechanical part of the machine. I think they were the part that
actually lets it pick a selection and move to the record choosen. Most
of the machines were full with records and I saw some manuals in the
machines.

Here are my questions. These jukeboxes don't have a spindle of records
they are all lined up in a line in the machine. Are these easier to
work on or harder? Do you think $400 is reasonable for this stuff. I'm
thinking of offering him $300 for it and see what he says. Are the NSM
Prestige, Festival, consol from the late 60's and early 70's reliable
machines.

Thanks for any comments.

NSMs can be a royal pain to fix. The vertical play mechanism is a lot
like what Seeburg used for many years -- but instead of the robust
metal construction of Seeburg's mechs, the NSMs were full of cheesy
plastic parts. All of the moving parts are extremely small and crammed
into a tiny little space, making it very difficult to understand what's
going on in there. The motors often need to be rebuilt, which is
tough, because they're very small. Electronic problems can be very
challenging to solve too.

The service manuals aren't much help, unless you happen to speak fluent
German and are an electronic engineer. The English translations are
horrible, and are often so incomprehensible that they're funny.

That said, when they're working, they're very enjoyable machines.
Nearly all NSMs had a visible (or at least partially visible)
mechanism, and their sound quality was very good. Like the Seeburg
mech, they're usually quite gentle on the records, both in the playing
and the handling.

The price your guy is asking sounds very reasonable, but not unheard
of. There are a lot of NSMs out there that people have given up on,
and when they're not working, they get sold cheap.

They're totally different than anything Rock-ola ever made, and more
challenging to fix -- but if you're smart, patient, and very good at
working with tiny things, you might have some success with these.


--- Gruggy ---