That's a very succinct way of putting it Dean.
I see many Tropicanas for sale. I probably see 10 Tropicanas for every Diplomat or Bandstand that I see. They must have made loads. And where I live in England I remember some of them were in use up until the early to mid 80s. so my conclusion is the JAL and JEL looked too old too soon, and the Tropicanas had a hard and long life, so are like a car with a million miles on the clock. Some design faults - individually named buttons that were easy to break or burn. (I've seen operators aftermarket sets of aluminium ones, just that they don't light up). Awful search unit connector. Annoying side speaker design. Easy to break your host glass. . Plus all the age related issues. The last visible mechanism Ami to be made, if you count the little cut out window for the price of play as visible, which everyone does. But like Dean mentions, wonderful when all set up, and the most amazing sound as well.
Nigel, uk
On 5 Sept 2025 at 16:48, Dean Carriveau via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:
Hi Tony, I had a similar intermittent problem with static in my Tropicana. Turned out to be a failing cap. Thanks for sharing. Those machines are wonderful when everything's dialed in but they do occasionally present some interesting repair opportunities. Dean On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:47:30 AM PDT, Nigel Pugh via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:
Hi Tony,
That's interesting. I messed about a lot with that age of Rowe Ami. In fact that's the only Amp/Preamp that I know anything about. I've never experienced your problem but had some similar interference down to a lighting choke some years ago. I tend to pull the mute plug from the amp and do a bit of diagnostics without the mech in play mode. Just makes life a bit easier to diagnose it. I guess if you did that with the mech at rest, your static would have disappeared. I'll know next time if I get static to pull the turntable power plug to the side of the mech. Owning a JBM for almost 40 years I think I've experienced every flipping problem that machine can throw at me - and they do ! Usually the cue for a problem to arise is half an hour before guests arrive.
Earlier this year I had really bad static and it turned out to be the base of one of the inverter valves. It drove me nuts, but did force me to replace all remaining old resistors in that area of the amp, so at least I came out of it with more improvement in sound.
Nigel, uk
On 5 Sept 2025 at 14:08, Tony Miklos via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:
Just wanted to share this.
I have an AMI JAL in the shop. One of the many problems was an intermittent static like noise in the speakers. I thought it had the sound of a 60 cycle arc, if you can imagine that. It didn't do it on the bench, but it was intermittent. It was very loud and would go up and down with the volume control. I pulled the inputs and it still did it. Started pulling tubes in the pre amp, then in the power amp. It didn't completely go away until I pulled all 4 output tubes. Somewhere along the line I had even unplugged the pre amp from the power amp and only had the output tubes in it. (they tested good) It still had the noise but very, very quiet. I had to have my ear close to the speaker to hear it.
To make a long story a little shorter, it was a bad turntable motor cam switch arcing and causing interference. When I pulled it out, it had about 80 ohms resistance. (Even with the bad switch in, it still played records at normal speed.)
It now makes me wonder if I had had an arc fault interrupter circuit breaker in my electric panel, if it would have tripped.
-- Tony Miklos Tony's Jukebox Repair
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