Music Maker Telematic (1968)
Title strip holder, selection dial disc and the complete mechanism are taken from Telematic 200.
The logo is from plastic and says "DITCHBURN". The "grill" is solid wood and metal. The bass speaker is mounted on the floor of the cabinet, pointing downwards and the treble speakers are mounted at the top of the back of the cabinet, pointing slightly upwards and towards the back.
Photos courtesy of Jason and Tony Holmes
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The Story behind this model
These machines stacking up the workshop from
1966 or thereabouts and we could do nothing with them. The punters did
not want them because they looked too old and Ditchburn did not want to
scrap them because they were still far too goodto scrap.
Geoffrey Norman Ditchburn loved these machines. They were the first he
imported from Germany in 1957 when the trade embargo was lifted and they
were the only machines that never needed more than a new stylus every
six months and they owed him nothing. But scrapping was out of the
question so he asked for designs for a new cabinet to give them a new
lease of life.
Of the three designs offered he chose one of which was modern and he set
about producing the first ten cabinets in 1968, they were an immediate
success. We had hit the right design at the right time so the rest were
put in new cabinets.
You may or may not agree but it did give an excellent mechanism a new
lease of life and made good commercial sense, they were offered for sale
and quite a few were sold outright and others went for hire, not all the
original cabinets were scrapped though until we sold out the company in
1972 when Gainsmead scrapped all Telematics in one stroke. They were the
first machines to go, but at least we did give them another four years.
They would still be going today, so if you have one of these machines
look after it, be it in its original cabinet or in a Ditchburn cabinet
they will go on for ever.
I believe the Telematic’s were the best jukebox ever produced bar none
especially with the T31 or T32 amplifier, they were ultra reliable and
if not messed with they would go on forever. We only had one engineer
that looked after the selectors of these machines, an ex post office
engineer and he looked after the Telematic from import in 1957 to the
scrapping in 1972, by Gainsmead.
(C) Arthur Phillips 2014
Senior
Audio Engineer, Ditchburn, Dock Road, Lytham, Lancashire, England, to
1973 company now sadly no longer in existence.
Die Angaben haben keinen
Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit oder Richtigkeit.
Bei den (importierten) Boxen können im Laufe der Jahre durchaus
Veränderungen vorgenommen worden sein. Copyright.
Ein Service von
Copyright by
Stamann Musikboxen