Devil In The Details

Sometimes the devil is in the details. I spent the day taking care of small problems that will keep a juke from working just as well as big problems. Example of a big problem: I broke the idler gear in the HSC1 motor gear box. Irreplaceable unless one is taken from another unit. It’s currently at Sean B’s place hopefully getting 3D’d.

Today I mounted the Gen2 computer in the SMC1. This is the same SMC1 that was at Jeff’s house and now brought home. When I was working on the SMC2 I robbed a lot of parts out of the SMC1 because of all the trouble I was having with the SMC2. So, for the SMC1 I already have a good mechanism, PCC, Gen2 computer and an amp that looks like it was gone through recently enough that the electrolytic capacitors are a modern style. I mounted the Gen2 and kept getting an Error 80. It took awhile but I found the paperwork for this wunderkind computer and the error code translates to Left Reset. What???? Never heard of that switch. I started researching and was actually at the point of emailing Ed the Inventor when it dawned on me that the error code meant the left reset button on the selector buttons was stuck down. There are two resets-left and right. I can remove the computer and the code goes away. I dis-assembled the button faceplate and selector buttons and their springs and tossed the lot into a bucket of soapy water for a soak.

While fiddling around I did get the juke to make a selection and play a record. The bass speakers are out. They’ve been reconed but I’m waiting to put them back in until I’m done crawling around the juke to lessen the chance of putting a knee through one of them again. Yes, I are super tech. Knees and all. The sound I had coming out of the horns was small and tinny. I also had no left channel presence. Out came the amp and onto the bench. No output at all. I broke out the O’scope and set it up. I unpegged the upper driver board and left it hanging to be able to get at the pre-amp board to look for inputs. With a scope one can work forwards or back. I prefer to go from input to output. I fired up the amp and now had sound ! I lifted the driver board and the sound went away. OK, been here, done that. I immediately unplugged the amp knowing something was wrong with the edge connectors. If you have various edge connectors making and breaking contact it can do weird smoky things to the amp. Costly things.

I went inside and washed the soaking buttons and faceplate and put them in the sun to dry and called timeout. Time to relax a bit and catch up on the internet and perhaps get a bit of writing done.

Most evenings I’ll work at the bench about 9pm until 10-10:30. Tonight I started on eight pulse amps I had picked up from the Operator’s Stash. These pulse amps are used from 1959 to 1964 I think and are all the same internally. They mount a 12AX7 tube and have an RCA input from the tormat. These pick up and amplify the pulse from a charged selection and trip the mechanism into Play. I thought to go through them testing resistors and replacing the one .05uf cap in them, get them tested in a juke and offer them up for sale. This is interesting work, something different. Most of them had one to five out of tolerance resistors and these were replaced. I did about five of them and called it a night.

The Operator’s Stash

About a year ago I sold a restored tear drop speaker to Eric in Ft. Worth. We messaged back and forth on FB about a few things over time. He told me in August of last year that he would be helping a retired operator sort out all the stuff in his two buildings. I politely asked to be included if the chance came.

Six months later that chance came. It was a pleasant surprise. I’ve sorted through an operator’s left overs several times over the years. I love it! Perhaps it’s a “hunt n gather” type thing. I do know that most people don’t know what they’re looking at when it comes to jukebox parts. I do. Not only that but they miss the significance of small parts. Eric and I made a date for me to come by on the following Saturday. I arrived and we made small talk while getting aquainted. Then I set to search. I spent a couple hours looking through everything and came away with a Honda Civic car load! I had several SHP and TSA amplifiers, DCC’s, a box of DCC boards, black and gray boxes used in the Microlog jukes, amp boards, vacuum tubes, electronic components, cartridges and needles, a wonderful Sencore Capacitor tester, single and dual credit units, loads of new electrolytic capacitors in bags of 100, scores of valuable output transistors, even a power transformer for a TSU receiver. While looking the old operator came by and sat around awhile. He looked so familiar. I’m sure we ran across each other back in the day. He hated seeing his business slowly go away. He was too old to do anything and accepted this fate. I guess we all do. He made mention he was going to lunch soon so I dawdled over things. I did not want the operator to be around when it came time to set a price. They usually think everything regardless of age is worth retail. In time he left and I kept searching. I kind of restrained myself to mostly jukebox parts as I just didn’t know what Eric would charge. Come time to settle; I offered $200 and he took it. I was elated. I had literally a car load of good parts. He even mentioned that most everything else was gonna get thrown away. If I saw something grab it. Well, I emptied the shelves of a couple thousand new lamps in packs of ten up to a hundred each.

When I got home I started really sorting through everything. I had even picked up an NOS Electrohome flyback transformer. I have replaced many of these back in the day. The more I thought about what he said about just throwing things away and what I knew I had left behind I contacted him a couple days later and asked if I could come by again. Say next Saturday? He mentioned he had already started throwing things away. I said Please stop! He agreed to both.

A big part of what I do nowadays is sell a lot of parts on ebay. So this time I picked up everything I thought I could sell for profit plus any parts I missed on purpose or not the first go round. I picked up a very nice sturdy tool case. The kind technicians have with 30 tool holder pouches. The kind I could never afford when I was doing service calls. In fact to this day I still use a large tackle box (Plano brand) for a tool box. I got perhaps 30 NOS American locks, all the pinball parts I could find-bags of rubbers, coils, flipper plastics, thumper bumper rings, and targets. Every NOS electronics component in the package I could see-I ended up with a couple hundred vintage electronics pieces. Diodes and transistors mostly. There were thousands of resistors but I stayed away from those-too many, too cheap. I even found several tubes of IC chips, now vintage or obsolete if you tried to buy one. 6800 architecture as used in pinball machines, CPU’s, RAM, ROM’s. Even a fairly large box of Ms Pacman daughter boards, RAM, and IC’s. This is what I meant by knowing what you’re looking at. I have had several Ms Pacs and regular PacMan’s and of course worked on them in detail so this was familiar stuff to me.

As I searched Eric and I got to know each other a bit better. We kept up a conversation throughout. He’s a nice guy who just happened to live next door to this operator while growing up in Ft. Worth. They had sorted through the big pieces; jukeboxes, pinballs, and arcade games in the prior months. He was even ex-Navy just like me and I’ll be darned we were even the same rate. AT or Aviation Electronics Technicians. So of course we started swapping sea stories. I had another literal car load. Trunk, backseat, floorboards, passenger front seat. You’d be surprised just how much a small car can hold. I was. And I gave another $200 for the lot. I’ll end up making a couple thousand out of this haul but I have my work cut out for me. Items have to be sorted, researched, cleaned and then put up for auction. Several things will slowly get rebuilt over the next couple years. I’m thinking the amplifiers specifically. And of course the black and gray boxes. I have zero room at home. I’m full up.

I doubt I’ll ever get to go through another operator’s business. Especially to the degree that I did this time. It’s the same sort of feeling of discovery I would get back in the day when I regularly went to auctions, flea markets, garage sales etc. Picking through the junk for the treasure.