This 1940s Jukebox Gets a New Lease on Life with Some Woodwork and a Raspberry Pi Upgrade

Pseudonymous maker "hosmtony", hereafter "Tony," has stripped an old Philco jukebox built in the 1940s back to its bare essentials — then given it a modern twist with the addition of a Raspberry Pi running Fruitbox.

"[This is] my 1948 Philco radio I bought for 10 bucks," Tony writes of the upcycling effort, "and repurposed as a Raspberry Pi-powered jukebox with Fruitbox. Funny thing is, this thing brand new was around $250 in 1948. A restored one now that has a working tube amp and record player? $250."

Tony's work on the effectively-scrap jukebox is very nearly ground-up, including stripping, sanding, re-staining and varnishing the original wood and a newly-built frame for a 10" display linked to the freshly upgraded digital internals. "This thing sat outside on a covered porch at a local thrift store for quite a while," Tony explains. "Hence the 10 bucks."

That newly-added display in its wooden frame was then linked to a Raspberry Pi single-bard computer running Fruitbox, a customizable music playback system designed specifically to mimic the look and feel of vintage jukeboxes. A range of skins are provided with the software, from modern designs to classic interfaces — the latter a perfect fit for the old Philco.

The upgrade wasn't merely concentrated on the playback devices, though: Tony's work included replacing the original speaker too. "It was just a single giant 12” speaker [originally]," the maker explains, which were replaced in the rebuild with a pair of Dayton Audio speakers and crossovers linked to modern digital amplifiers.

"I just didn’t have the space to enclose them," Tony adds, "but surprisingly they sounded better than I had hoped, even being free air. I wasn’t expecting the moon but I was quite pleased."

More details on the project are available in Tony's Reddit thread.