This is a Seeburg 3W1 wall-o-matic selector. I have one on my kitchen counter. It is connected to my 1952 Seeburg model C jukebox. It basically allows me to remotely select the 45 rpm record of my choice .
Okay, did I lose anybody when I used the term jukebox or 45 rpm record? I hope not. It may sound strange, but we do often encounter young people who have never even seen a cd. If you fit that description, better leave now, I’ll never get you up to speed, 45 rpm or otherwise.
With all the advances in technology and sound quality one might wonder why anyone would want to listen to a record on a machine that is 60 years old. I can’t fully explain it, but it is very comforting to own something which predates even myself. I like not only hearing the music, but I get to watch it as well. I drop my quarter in and push two buttons and wait as the mechanism travels the length of the jukebox until it finds my record and then as if by magic, it picks it up and starts to play. As I listen to the Skyliners sing “Since I Don’t Have You”, I can almost imagine my parents dancing to it at the local burger joint. It’s like having a time machine without needing Doc Brown’s DeLorean.
In total the jukebox holds 100 selections, which pales in comparison to the thousands of songs stored on your typical i-pad, but each of the songs on my jukebox comes with decades of memories and that’s a great deal for 25 cents a song.
