This and That
The Seeburg Life has been a little slow lately. I finally finished the STD3 and got it listed for sale. I’m anxious to see how the market reacts as this is the first offering for me in the Pacific North West. I even priced it a lot lower than usual to help it move. It’s almost laughable to see the ad get 2500 clicks online and no serious inquiries. Almost as if “Look, it’s a jukebox!” And then the inevitable “Is it available?” Well, duh!
The finishing touches to the STD3 or Sun Star were typical-all the little nit-picky stuff. One twinkle light needed replaced. I had to replace a purple sapphire needle on the A side with a yellow diamond. I like to have a good set of diamond needles in the juke for long life at home. The trip switch needed fine adjustment. I still have to pull the lower front glass as at some point a title strip fell in.
I’ve been sorting through almost a 1000 records bought from a fellow south of here in Oregon. The guy told me there were no collectibles in the batch. I wasn’t really looking for collectible records-just an assortment I could offer people who buy a juke. I like to give a mix of country and western and rock. Sometimes I pick them at random, sometimes I let the customers pick them out. Turns out the record haul is loaded with collectibles. Found a 1960 Hank Ballard and The Midnighters white lable promo of “The Continental Walk”. Not only that….a super rare 45 rpm white label Radio Promotional Spot record to go with it. One side has two tracks of “The Continental Walk” at 7 and 8 seconds. The other side has 7 second and 18 second tracks for promoting “Hello”. Too bad rare doesn’t always mean worth a lot of money. There are a ton of early and mid sixties rockabilly, rock n roll, and of course a lot of “other”. Other being somebody and their orchestra or Pat Boone or jazz or even children’s records.
These records have been a tough sort-out. The easy part is throwing out the cracked, warped, and badly damaged records. Next I sort in piles of rock, country, and other. Each of those piles gets sorted according to something that may have collector value and common records. Then the “possibles” have to be researched. And so many dirty records! They have to be washed to determine condition and to be able to play them on my stereo. I do like to give a listen as I’ll keep the ones I like for my own collection. This guy kept the records in his garage in sacks and apparently the doors were opened anytime the wind blew dust around. That promo of “The Continentle Walk” will most likely end up in my jukebox as it really swings.
The repair work got a shot in the arm with a fellow bringing the amplifier, receiver, and eventually the mechanism to his 222 in for repair work. The receiver was a typical cap job with the exception of going through the stepper unit. He’s hoping to connect a wallbox at some point. This TSU1 did have 13 bad resistors which is not common. Most receivers have 1-3 out of tolerance resistors. Nice thing about replacing that many resistors is that the receiver will be in tip top shape electronically for a long time.
I pulled the clutch out of his 222 mech. Typical cross shaft jam. Freed it up. Those two sentences cover about an hour and a half of work. Then came the fun part. His cartridge was in a bag with two screws. One screw holds the cartridge in place, the other holds the piece the cartridge plugs into. So that piece is hanging loose. I knew what the other screw went to and before I could follow the train of thought to re-install that screw; my mind went another direction. This while trying to hold a thought and a conversation at the same time. However, I kept going in the direction of plugging the cartridge in! Without its screw holding it firm I flipped it out of the tonearm and broke the tonearm wires. Lots of curse words ran silently through my mind. That is not a fun repair. I’ve done many of them. Let me rephrase that. I’ve HAD to do many of them. The tonearm has to be pulled, the tonearm wires have to be pulled from its routing. Ticklish soldering job and then re-running the tonearm wires and rehanging the tonearm. Lastly the wires must be ohmmed out to the terminals to ensure all is correctly and firmly connected. Live and learn.
My Seeburg Life 