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Fantastic write up Frank, very good insight of the company at its prime. Those JPM t-shirts would be worth a few bob these days. Did you manage to keep one?

Ha you beat me to it Superbank. I need to get up earlier hehehe. Another great write up Frank Working at Visual Art printing JPM glasses etc I was on £30 a week but were rewarded bonuses for overtime and staying late to get orders completed early. Great days I must say. Looking forward to your next chapter mate. Great topic👍👍👍

I recall that machine and the design but at that time I was off the tools as such and managing Development and production engineering and or SWP project management. What I do know is that the cabinet design was as a desire from Jack Jones to get into the US market, we even had an arcade on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and as you may know eventually after JPM, Jack bought and I ran as MD, a sheet steel engineering company and developed the curved top, metal cabinet idea and the Azkoyen hopper through to large scale manufacture when we kicked off the Astra cabinet design, but if you read my posts I will go into that again.

In the early days at Bell Fruit it sounds very similar (1994). There were temps that often got laid off as soon as the work dropped. Good week we was doing 600 - 800 machines a week and overtime was unlimited. We got an attendance bonus which worked out at around £500 which was a lot of money back then. I started on £120 a week bit could earn £300 with overtime. At 16 and being used to £5 pocket money was a huge boost

Few I ripped including Blue Moon 0.3 (50p payout?)and it's char (off a gal chip) corra, Cops n Robers and East Enders 5p M27521_mixed.zip Enjoy

Trying to find out, I am not working with the machine directly, it been a bit backwards and forwards. Was only brought in to rebuild the tracks around the battery area as some other tech tried to do it and made a piss poor job of it, just trying to help this guy out. Going to get him to come on forum and read everything that has been posted. Going there this Sunday to check it out wiring loom between payside and S2, but first I will proceed with test that player and wizard have suggested to get the gist of issue, many thanks to all that have help so far, just want to get this fruity working for this guy, I believe he would like to have it his wedding reception if possible, which is six weeks away so there is time.

Sorry fella no, we never dreamt in a million years that they would be a collectors item! I do remember feeling a right pr3£k at the time doing a photo shoot and I can remember the crazy old colourful (ooh matron) coot taking the photos. He was playing the "Ink Spots" over and over again on a huge pair of corner mounted Tanoy speakers which I envied!

Yeah these all boot nicely mate... send me your address and I will post these off to you tomorrow

no probs mate

Very good to read, it almost puts an image in my head of a 70s / 80s factory floor, where people always turned in on time and gave a solid days work! 👌

ok chris i will burn all three files and you can try them pm me your post code and address and i will do them for you

Jpm was deffo ahead of its time on work and reward ethic(more so considering frank is recalling the company setup during the 70s) top stuff frank keep the inside info flowing.

Once again forgive me, these are personal observations so I’m bound to figure in them. Ok, so early to mid 1970’s. Flairs were the in thing, that and turtle neck sweaters, bright flowered shirts and JPM were reinforcing their early beginnings. We seemed to have found a recipe for machine development that combined decent technical detail and popular game play. Most of this was the brain child of Alan Parker, Howard Parker and Ron Watts the latter being the one that combined the ideas of the others into great artwork design. At this time I had moved from reel build and test onto the Control Board test and from there a step, literally a step, through a newly opened break in the wall and onto the final machine test area. In reality this was taken quite soon after I had begun my employment with JPM and I was one of only a few individuals to have worked full time in all the areas within the JPM test area although others had obviously done similar with other smaller companies. Alongside the production staff’s motley collection of vehicles, the car park was beginning to be populated by vehicles that displayed, quite rightly, the recent success of the company. BMW 5 series, Rover P6 3.5, Aston Martin ( ok second hand ) and Mercedes. Visitors regularly turned up in equally high class vehicles and it was not unusual to see the odd Rolls or Bentley parked out front as the larger than life operators and distributors, sometimes with their secretary's ( nudge nudge ) came to look around. Let me necessarily outline at this point a little about the culture at JPM. It was a Team. That is no hyperbole or unrealistic exaggeration. That phrase has been hi-jacked over the years by wannabe’s with no real substance behind their claims, but it was used as a slogan in the JPM Marketing Strategy ( photo to follow ) and quite honestly, it was the truth. There was just not an us and them. The directors had a job to do as much as we all did but they often joined in with conversations at the factory door or came to have a chat and ask how things were and if anything could be improved, and they quite often were as a result. They also bought Fish and chips ( no Domino’s in those days ) when there was a need to work late, sometimes all nighters, and it was far more that just ‘trying to stay with the boys’. One of the biggest factual statements of the team culture was the payment structure. As memory serves we were on about £30(ish) a week, now that wasn’t a lot of money and certainly less than I had been earning as a time served Joiner and latterly a Ceramic tiler, but I had to give it all up due to an injury which is why I took this temporary job in a factory! (Nothing as permanent as temporary eh) If you worked a flat 40 hours then no bonus was payable ( as I remember ) needless to say I never found out and when the shout of “Bonus is up” was shouted out, the top wage earner on the huge paper chart pinned to the wall was either Gary G, Gary P, or me or one of very few others. I have recollections of monthly pay slips boosted by over £1,000 but 70-80 hour weeks were not unusual, and you were never, never ever, late. I also have vague recollections of going over to the Plymouth Arms on bonus day, but I don’t remember going home. That is not to say that this was a constant, I remember vaguely being asked to go the cabinet shop which had a large open area that was usually filled with cabinets but on this day was ominously empty. As we all circled Jack Jones he explained about the huge downturn in business and that he had to lay off 30% of the production staff, turning around he apologised individually as he picked every third person, I did the maths and the head count pretty quickly and stayed exactly where I was but filled with fear at the possibility of being laid off for the first time in my life. A few months later most of those staff that were laid off were back anyway. However it was just a little time later when a position was advertised internally for the development department and although I had not long been married and taken on quite a mortgage, the idea of a constant flat salary, but admittedly at a considerably lower wage, appealed to me after all I could still earn a few quid on the weekend tiling if I needed to! And so it was that I left the production area and climbed the stairs ( and not just metaphorically ) to claim my bench in the development area and join a bunch of new colleagues and disciplines. L These were the TEAM ( printed on the back) give away T shirts - one was in each Cash box for a period L -> R Rob Higgins, Me, Ernie Beaver, Rob Old, Howard Parker, Huw Thomas

Ron Watts was the design guru behind a great deal of JPM's products and success. I was always happy to work with Ron as he was open with guidance and assistance, but as well as the work aspect he was a solid guy to know. More to come in my recollections!