July 12, 2025

STD Madness

Seeburg STD that is…..The series started with the STD160 or Vogue II in 1974. Followed by the 1975 STD2 Entertainer, the 1976 STD3 or Sunstar, and the last one in 1977 the Mardi Gras or STD4. These are absolutely the same jukebox inside with cosmetic differences on the outside. All parts and mechanisms are totally interchangeable. The STD 3 and 4’s are my favorite “modern” jukeboxes. I find them quick and easy to repair and restore. I brought my old standby, a STD4 I use as a test box, with me from Texas, an STD3 bought from a fellow in Texas, and now have this STD3 I recently picked up in Tacoma.

It’s about time to tackle the STD3 Sunstar now that I got it home. I like to start with the mechanism and thought I’d run down what I found on this and the process I used to bring it back to full working order. I pulled the mech base pins, unplugged a few cables and slid the whole mechanism out and put it on the bench. Someone had obviously spent time cleaning the mechanism. I don’t think a full tear-down and wash was done like I do but it had definitely had a lot of time spent cleaning what could be reached. And they did a good job. I like to get these down to just the mechanism and base. I start by removing the long piece on top of the record rack that has the Selection Playing tracks underneath. I remove the pop meter assembly and gray box mount. I throw away the pop meter stuff and cut a piece off of the left pop meter arm so that the tormat cable doesn’t hang on it and will re-use it to mount the gray box holder to.

It doesn’t take long to get down to the mech and base. I took the mech off of the base by removing the clutch assembly, rolling the mech to the right side and removing the screws from the left half of the track. Then I roll the mech back over the left half track and remove both by prying the track up while lifting the mech off. Be sure to remove the cable guide screws by the reverse switch and the cable clamp at the rear of the base or you’ll never get it off.

With a now-washed and cleaned base I turned the mech over, inspected and oiled the guide rollers and the three mechanism wheels. Look for flat spots on the wheels. It’s common and you want a mechanism to roll not slide. After re-uniting the mechanism and base I started oiling the mech. As I said someone did some cleaning but the mech was almost bone dry. Any place where metal touches metal gets a drop or two of 20 weight sewing machine oil. I use a Zoom Spout oiler. I’ve used nothing else since 1985 for oiling these mechs. I work my around starting at the tonearm assembly going to the right-just habit, and one thing I always do is remove the four screws from the “tower” and take it off. This is the casting directly behind the motor capacitor that houses the worm drive gear connected to the motor coupler underneath. It has a ball bearing that can fall out so I drag a fingernail up the shaft as I lift it off to prevent that from happening. Once oiled and re-assembled I checked for clearance and it had none. It needs .003 to .010 clearance and is done by loosening the big nut and adjusting with a hex head wrench while bobbing the bottom of the shaft up and down. Clearance you can feel will be enough. This is a good spot to mention that the proper procedure for installing a motor coupler is to push it up and then down to its final position before tightening the set screws. Doing it this way ensures that the worm drive shaft is bottomed out.

From here it’s on to the turntable gear and shaft. This one had zero end play. Once again, .003-.010 is needed. I like to remove the small plate with the adjuster so I can push the turntable shaft back and forth more than usual while oiling it. With that adjustment out of the way the clutch gets taken apart and the cross shaft taken out. A sticky cross shaft is The Numero Uno problem causing the mech to either not drop into Scan from Play position or stay in Play position once tripped. Seeburg used some kind of lubricant that hardens over time. I’ve had to use a heat gun to get that shaft out more than once or twice. If you hammer it you risk breaking the relatively fragile cast metal. Save yourself trouble and just take it apart and clean the holes and shaft real well. Once re-assembled the cross shaft should rotate easily. I use wheel bearing grease on the clutch worm gear, the top clutch gear and its mate on the turntable shaft before re-assembling. This is immediately followed by Clutch 1 through 4 adjustments.

Now I have a running mech and will connect 115vac to it and run it back and forth on the bench while manually tripping and rejecting to watch it operate. Once I’m satisfied that the mech is running right I’ll file and clean all mechanism switches. The detent points were burned and pitted on this one. The burned spot in the picture is about 40% of the contact face. It needs to be filed completely down. A fine point file took care of the pits and then a burnishing file polished the points back to like-new. I was curious as to what grit a burnishing file or tool is but can find nothing. So I used the finest grit sandpaper I had which was 400 grit and it was not fine enough at all. When properly burnished the point face will be shiny and smooth as chrome. I’d like to get some 1000 or 2000 grit sandpaper for grins to test.

I re-assembled the mech. Someone got sloppy and the Playing Indicator board was missing a couple of the washers it used for spacers. I got that taken care of, checked the tracking and points. The tormat got cleaned as did the tormat contact block contacts. I found the contact block top be horizontally off-center to the inside. It needs to be aligned so the two contacts move over the centers of the double row of tormat contacts. This is the “Read-Out Contact Block 1” adjustment in the manual. Number two is the up n down adjustment and this was needed as well. It was too high.

After all this I put the mechanism assembly back in the jukebox, got the mech base cradle properly adjusted. Someone had tightened the nuts down. They need to be just touching the metal rack so the springs can work to properly support the mech. I started making selections and this is when the real madness began.

To Be Continued

June 25, 2025

Seeburg Caster Fun

In addition to ruining a fine Samsung Plasma television Mayflower Van Lines also knocked a a caster off the bottom of my STD4 test machine. Seeburgs and their casters….More often than not Seeburgs do not roll well at all. The older “hat” style sockets in the 50’s machines often tilted jamming the caster. A more common problem was the bearings falling out allowing the caster to lean instead of standing straight. There was so little clearance around the caster wheel that this allowed the caster to rub against the case. This is particularly bad on the 70’s jukes that had the square steel boxed inset casters. They rubbed against the metal case. The slightly later STD 3 and 4 had actual platform casters.

I set out to repair the STD4 caster problem one fine PNW morning. The first thing to do is get it on its back. I took the relatively heavy SHP amplifier out, removed the mechanism, lower front door, and titlestrip lid to lessen the weight. Using a two-wheeled dolly from behind I gently lowered the dolly with the juke to the ground. The front right caster was the culprit. The actual problem was a little more sinister. The jukebox had been dropped, apparently on this particular caster, most likely rolling down a ramp and while the wooden bottom didn’t break it darn sure bent. I removed the caster. It was fine and could be re-used.

I removed the right side bass speaker for an internal inspection. Using a two pound sledge I tried to hammer the bottom back flat to no avail. Now I was stuck. I couldn’t re-mount the caster a few inches over. It would still be at an angle because of the bent bottom. The solution finally dawned on me. I went to the local Lowe’s and found a nice piece of 1/2″ thick two foot long wooden board. Back at the garage I cut it to fit and screwed it over the bent part of the jukebox bottom. I like this solution because there was plenty of good flooring to screw the board to and made for a strong repair. I remounted the two right side casters and it was up and rollin’ once more. The right side is a quarter inch higher than the left but it won’t hurt anything.

Back in January or February a fellow put a STD3 up for sale on Facebook for a decent price. He lives in Tacoma. While messaging about it we struck up an aquaintance. I told him I’d like to buy it but that I wouldn’t be in the area, Vancouver, for several months. He nicely agreed to hold it for me. This juke had been on the back of my mind ever since. I eventually made it to my new home in Vancouver and as soon as possible made arrangements to pick it up from David.

I set out in the pick’em up truck up I5 to Tacoma on another fine PNW morning. A little over two hours later I pulled up to David’s house and met a fine fellow. He showed me around a very interesting shop/ garage complex. He has several jukeboxes up and running all filled with records and all played often. He is an interesting fellow. He has a beautiful yard filled with a myriad of plants. He has done all the landscaping and planting. He introduced me to pineberries-strawberries that are white in color and have a distinct pineapple flavor. In fact he sent me back with some rooted plants that are slowly growing in one of my flower pots.

I saw his cool as hell Star Wars collection, some rare Holley carbs, and a few little inventions. He has a fine hotrod. Anyway we finally made it to the jukebox and it was good to go. Very clean. I won’t have to do a whole lot to this jukebox to get it ready to sell. He even added custom LED lights to it that change color and tempo. Pretty neat! Sure enough though, tried moving it and it rolled “lumpity lump”. We got it on its back in the truck. One of the rubber wheeled casters someone added had shredded. I’ve tried rubber wheels as well one time. They cannot handle the load. Even hard plastic wheeled casters will shatter or have chunks come off. Stick to iron my friends.

So, one fine morning, ( it’s been a beautiful summer ) I set out to replace the casters on this STD3. I had gone by Harbor Freight Tools the day before and picked up four iron two inch casters that had an actual installed height of three inches. Perfect! And then a 30 minute job stretched into an hour and a half.

I got the juke on its back same as I did the STD4. Started removing casters or tried. Every one of them had a screw that had been forced into one of the T nuts Seeburg used to secure these casters. I removed both bass speakers. Shoot, one of them had a screw that wouldn’t release. Its T nut just spun. I couldn’t really get behind it to hold because of the speaker so I ended up using a Dremel tool with a cutoff wheel and X’ed the head. Using a chisel and hammer I knocked the hex head pieces off and pulled the damned screw out. I tried various ways to unscrew the stuck screws. There just wasn’t any way to hold the T nut and unscrew the stuck screw. The progression of increasing force was typical. First a pair of needle nose pliers to try and hold the errant T nut, then regular pliers, water pump pliers with their increased leverage, and finally Vice Grips. Nada. No luck.

So, I got serious. Broke out the side angle grinder with a cut off wheel, the big-boy version of the Dremel setup used on the speaker screw, and X’ed the bottoms of the four damned lag screws stuck in the damned T nuts. Once all were freed the job became rather straightforward. I mounted the new casters keeping them in the same locational area but arranged so none of the old holes and T nuts were used. Screwed ’em down with hex head #10 screws. Used a new T nut, screw, and washer in the one speaker hole. Wrapped it all up, got the juke upright and it rolls fine on the new iron casters. Just another day in My Seeburg Life.