It is a Jack Hylton Music
Maker and to date nobody has come up with another one, I would be most
interested to meet anyone who has one or knows more than I do about the
development of the model. For those in the group who may be
interested it is the first English Jukebox to be mass produced in a
proper factory system. It was the brain child of the band leader
Jack Hylton who's name it bears. He brought the idea from his regular
trips to the USA and a company in Lancashire called Hawtins manufactured
it. The jukeboxes were not sold they were rented out with a share of the
cash box takings as payment, if the site was poor the juke was moved on
and so on. At some point a
Mark 2 version
was designed and the mechanisms from the MK1 was transferred into the
new cabinets, the old original cases were then burned. The Mark 2 model
is what became known as The "Ditchburn Music Maker" because at some
point The Ditchburn organisation also in Lancashire aquired the
manufacturing rights etc. The saga goes on as Dithcburn also preferred
to rent the machines rather than sell them out right, and in the fifties
they also had a conversion programme known as the Mark 2R this involved
cutting the whole of the cabinet top off and replacing it with a
new glassfibre unit together with a mod to the mechanism which made it
play 30 45s. So every mark2 R resulted in the total destruction of an
original Mark 2. They are therefore quite rare and of course the mk2 is
very Art deco and very British.
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