Matt, we are in conditional agreement here.
I agree that damping was unnecessary and I eliminate it on all the Seeburgs I use. The thinking was that the somewhat steep setdown slope caused the stylus to land too hard. Another reason given to me from a Seeburg tech was that it lessened the tendency of skipping when people jostled the machine. My opinion: "whatever". After the SS160 was introduced in fall 1966, Seeburg began using a variant of the V15 Pickering series. In fact you can cut away the plastic from a domestic V15 stylus and use it in a Seeburg cart -something I'll have to go back to now that original styli are NLA.
I do know those jukebox tonearms are bulky, clunky, and poorly designed.
Here is where the "conditional' part comes in. I'll give reader a brief rundown on juke tonearms post 1955:
Seeburg: Lightweight and relatively low mass. Easily capable of 2-3 gm tracking. Even with the needle bearing there was little discernible friction. The pressure springs are high resolution and the pressure remains constant through the normal warp deviations. No real mods needed.
Pre-Rowe AMI: Lousy as built. massive and unbalanced with crude lateral bearing made worse by the lack of a counterweight. Kiddie phono shit. However, get rid of that torsion spring and add a counterweight along with a gentler trip switch and they'll track perfectly @3gm. I've tested them @2gm but settled on 3 as best choice.
http://s1192.photobucket.com/user/Rob-N ... ort=2&o=13 That is a modded arm w/ counterweight, lighter wires and improved trip sw.
Ami-Rowe (Triangle era) 1100-1200 Series (1962-1978) were excellent with counterweight simple but low friction lateral and magnetic reed trip. The only changes I make are to eliminate the "no record" contact leads as they just add drag. I've successfully tracked these arms @1gm though I run them @ 2 commercially. Setting them up optimally can be tricky due to some rather riggy "adjustment" procedures. There are also two anti-skate fingers that act on the trip magnet to prevent the arm from bouncing into the play grooves at the beginning of a record. A lot of op's didn't bother to set these and just turned up the weight. Typical.
1950's Rock-ola: Crapp-o arms with poor "bearings" and kiddie phono weight spring. Again, add a counterweight and lighter wires these arms will be good for 3gm tracking. Oddly, the trip switch just a pair of gentle leaf blades and is Ok as-is.
In the 60's they went to the "Accu-track" a low mass arm but kept a stupid torsion spring. Get rid of that, add a counterweight and you have one of the best arms in that industry.
Wurlitzer...1955-1970....Eh......add a better cart, lighter wires mod the trip sw and you get down to 3-4gm. The arms are too massive and bearing too simple for those to ever be great trackers. I use a Pickering V15 DAT or NPAC in those.
That's my two-cents-and-change on the tonearm issue.
Rob
