Sights and Sounds — Wurlitzer "Statesman" 3400 Jukebox

hello and welcome to technology connectors sights and sounds today we are going to be looking at and listening to the Statesman by Wurlitzer perhaps the ugliest jukebox ever made before we get started because it's been a long time since I made one of these I want to explain the purpose of this series sights and sounds is a way for me to repackage Old b-roll from previous projects to accomplish two purposes first I can show off a lot of b-roll that just wasn't seen in the main video because generally there's much more than makes it into the final video but secondly I can make an audio descriptive video for people who cannot see what's on the screen now because of that I'm going to be describing a lot of what we see verbally and for this particular subject there's a lot of description we need so for those that are looking for an audio experience this is like 95 me talking just because there's a heck of a lot we need to explain as far as how the Jukebox works so this is a long video it's going to take a while for us to get through all this but I hope everyone can find it enjoyable and useful so I'm going to start this video by just getting right into it and I've set up a sequence which will replicate basically everything a user would do to use this jukebox in the real world now a couple of caveats most of these shots have the lid open and also the back of the machine is missing a panel so these noises are louder than they would be normally they'd be pretty muffled and the music would be the loudest part but you will hear me insert a coin into the coin mechanism the latch mechanism will engage and then I'll make a selection you'll hear the disk play and then it will put the disk back and stop playing so let's do that foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] and we'll do that one more time foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so now that we've experienced the meat and potatoes I'll go ahead and give a description of the Jukebox so jukeboxes at least real jukeboxes that took real money to play real music in real places in the real world are not small objects and this fella is no exception so the overall dimensions of the Jukebox as you're standing in front of it and imagine it's in front of the wall the thing is 41 inches wide which is 104 centimeters it sticks out from the wall 24 inches or 61 centimeters and its highest point off the floor is 53 inches up or 134.62 centimeters so the highest Dimension is the height however the top third of the Jukebox is basically just the thin section of the control panel if you can imagine about two-thirds up its height there is about at waist height a big horizontal surface you can absolutely imagine bar patrons putting their drinks on there while they made some collections for the Jukebox and that surface is a piece of glass which has all the selection slips below it which tell you all the songs that are actually in the Jukebox and then at the back of the machine there is a vertical piece that's the control panel on the right we have the coin slot and a bunch of indicator lights on to the left of that there is a pretty blank panel that actually contains the treble speakers then above that we have the buttons we have the letters a through V that's 20 letters I and O are skipped because they look too similar to one and zero then there is a reset button and then there are the numbers one through zero and finally above that we have a weird Mountain scene for some reason this would have an animation running but the components that make the animation work are not in the machine right now and that animation by the way is just like the it's really weird I it's basically like supposed to make it look like the clouds are moving or something it doesn't it's not convincing at all now the reason why I say this is the ugliest jukebox ever made is because this jukebox was the first Model to use the whirlamatic record changing mechanism and that mechanism marked an official giving up on making the Jukebox interesting to watch they had actually kind of already given it up a little bit beforehand but to explain from the 1930s until the end of the 1960s all the Jukebox manufacturers put their mechanism on display so you could actually watch the thing grab the records put them on the turntable however that might happen towards the end of the 60s I guess people just stopped caring about that and wurlitzer's previous model the Americana 2. let me double check that no excuse me the Americana 3 the 3300 model it actually had the old mechanism in it and that mechanism was meant to be seen but they just hit it so it was buried low in the Jukebox and it was a similar design to this one for the Statesman having officially decided to throw in the towel they put together a new record-changing mechanism which was uh not not a looker let's just put it that way but it is very much what you might consider a typical record player but before we look at that the other thing about it being ugly is not just that you don't get to see what's going on on the inside but the aesthetic of this jukebox in particular is less of something colorful something nice to see in the corner of a bar and more like a weird piece of Lounge Furniture it's very Brown which of course you know I like brown but even I will say this is way too much Brown um the sides of it are simulated wood grain the front panel where the base speakers are down below is this weird three rectangles that have kind of an orange and gold pattern in the back and there's got a bunch of holes in it to let the sound through and then right below the main shelf part there's a black strip that goes around the sides and that's our only interesting colored area we have a purple illuminated strip that says Statesman by Wurlitzer unfortunately it's broken on my machine but oh well it's just cracked but the uh that strip there is actually kind of interesting because the way that it's screen printed when it's not illuminated it's white so on the back of this glass there's a printing there's a layer of white ink then there's purple behind the white so when it's illuminated it looks purple and then also on the words Statesman the purple is actually removed and the word Statesman appears in Orange but then there's actually an another layer of black lettering on the front side of the glass so you do have a slight 3d effect going on it's it's pretty interesting I'll give it that but then the rest of it there's a lot of chrome at the top the top piece is like a fake leather texture even though it's just plastic it's just it's not a very pretty jukebox but that's why it was cheap so now I'll go ahead and open it up so the top section that has the Shelf at the bottom with all the selection in it and then the uh control panel at the back that big L-shaped piece lifts up on this massive hinge and there's a bunch of uh there's these counterweighted spring things to help keep it up it's a pretty elaborate setup here oh and I forgot to mention the weight of the Jukebox this this big fella weighs 372 pounds or 168 kilograms is not fun to move around let me tell you okay so now we are looking down into the Jukebox at the warlimatic mechanism so again this was the first machine to use this in this machine it's mostly blue but I've seen other examples where it's kind of a cream or off-white color and anyway this is a pretty stripped down automatic record player mechanism so on the left hand side of the machine we have a big Carousel of records that looks kind of like a big donut it's a big toroidal shape it's not quite full of Records but it can hold 100 7 inch 45 RPM records and they make a big circle in a carousel on the right hand side of that carousel there is a white hoop and that hoop it's it's a little more than half of a circle and it is surrounding one of the records right now this thing is surrounding the top and sides of one of the records and there's a little finger thing down at the bottom that moves to actually grab onto one of those records that hoop thing is the record transfer arm which will grab the record pull it out of the Carousel and then slap it down onto the turntable which is to the right it's a pretty standard looking turntable it just happens to be a little bit small because it only plays seven inch records it also has an uh a large Center spindle and this machine has the ability to play 33 and a third RPM records that have a small hole so if there's a seven inch record with a small hole it will actually uh drop down that middle part and slow the record down to 33 and a third RPM or slow the turntable down to 33 to third RPM pretty cool feature um I have I don't have any records that use it so what's good though about that is I have a couple of um 45 RPM records with a small hole and rather than having to cut out the middle section I was able to just unplug the solenoid which runs that speed changing mechanism so that way it it doesn't work and so those records work fine in the machine but if I had some of those interesting like small LPS or whatever they called them I would need to find a workaround but any case doesn't matter I'm off on a tangent we are now looking from the back of the machine and because we're looking forward everything is flipped so now the Carousel of Records is on the right and the record turntable is on the left what I want to point out here is that directly below the Carousel of Records is a weird looking Contraption hanging underneath it that is the selection accumulator and it is incredibly important for how the Machine Works basically that part has more control over anything else in the machine and I will get to explaining that just in a moment but I want to establish the concept that where this part lives in the machine is directly below the Carousel of Records because that's going to be very important as we go on so now let's dissect everything that happened in the intro sequence so first I want to talk about the coin Mech a little bit more in detail the Jukebox has a fairly complicated coin mechanism because it not only has to accept or reject coins but it also has to sort them and change the value depending on what it accepts this coin Mech accepts nickels dimes quarters and half dollars I am not sure if it accepts dollar coins I don't know when the Susan B Anthony dollar came out I am sitting in front of a computer how about I answer that uh coin when did that first appear 79 it looks like so no I don't think it takes any dollar coins um if I have any numismatists in the audience you can correct me but so I think it's just Nichols uh nickels dimes quarters and half dollars and those different coins when they fall in will land on a different switch so uh in this shot I have two different shots here one is just closer on a smartphone we are watching the coins fall into the coin Mech and landing on one of the various switches foreign box the credit unit is completely borked I don't know what is wrong with it in this shot you might notice that it's missing a relay I've put that relay there I ended up using it for the main record changer function but I can't get the credit unit to work at all don't know what's wrong with it so I just gave up because it's set to free play it doesn't matter but if the Credit Unit were working its job would be to count up from zero and add the appropriate number of credits depending on what coins you had inserted and so long as it registered a credit it would send power to the latch solenoid the latch solenoid's primary function is to enable the keyboard without the latch solenoid active the buttons don't do anything if there's a theme to this jukebox and indeed this video it would be electrical Simplicity made possible by mechanical complexity one single device a solenoid which is simply a cylindrical electromagnet that draws a steel plunger inside itself to pull on something is doing a heck of a lot for this jukebox now this is going to be difficult to describe verbally so much so that I've resorted to scripting this section but I'll try my best the latch solenoid is part of a sort of panel contraption that sits behind the keyboard ordinarily this panel faces down towards the inside of the Jukebox but with the lid open and the buttons pointed at the ceiling the panel faces outward the solenoid is sitting on the right side of this panel arranged vertically with the plunger sticking out the bottom when it's energized it pulls the plunger upward which pulls on a large L-shaped bracket that surrounds the solenoid on the right side and sticks up above the solenoid and then that bracket is attached to a long linkage which travels far to the solenoids left ultimately these two brackets here simply redirect the motion of the solenoids travel from up and down to left and right and relocate where it applies its pulling Force I honestly can't fathom why it was designed like this as there looks to be room for the solenoid to simply pull directly on the linkage but it is what it is to the left of the solenoid is where the action actually occurs three vertical linkages are arranged one after the other and are connected at the bottom to a horizontal piece overall this has a sort of trident shape the middle prong of this trident is substantially taller than the other two and this is what the solenoid is pulling on it pivots at its bottom and the solenoid pulls its top to the right slightly when energized on either side of it are linkages that attach to the keyboard now if you're wondering how there are only two linkages for 20 letter buttons and 10 number buttons well behind the keyboard spanning the length of all the letter buttons is a large metal bar with angled slots cut into it at every button position when any of the 20 letter buttons is pressed it will engage with its angled slot and push that bar to the side there's a similar bar behind all the number buttons and these two sliding bars then attach to the linkages on the latch solenoid Contraption the left hand linkage connects to the letter buttons and the right hand linkage connects to the number buttons these two linkages pivot at their top and when buttons are pressed their bottom section moves outward slightly these linkages are so complex because they need to do two things first they need to actually hold on to the keyboard buttons that are pressed so they'll stay depressed when let go so they have that mechanical aspect first if the solenoid is pulled in then the buttons will latch in place that's why it's called the latch solenoid we'll get into why exactly that needs to happen shortly but this is why we have that reset button if you've pressed the wrong button you'd like to be able to correct that the reset button is simply a momentary switch that will interrupt power to the solenoid that will cause it to let go and a spring will pull the linkage in the other direction to release the erroneously pressed button here's what that sounds like letter reset number reset letter reset number preset the second thing these linkages need to do is connect some circuits together the linkages have small protrusions on them which push against various Banks of switches as they move some of the switches are stacked with multiple contact points within them and others are simpler and these need to be there so that the buttons on the jukebox actually do things or possibly not do things for instance I could just hold down a letter and number button manually but we don't want that to do anything unless there's a credit on the jukebox otherwise that'd be the world's easiest cheat code so the center linkage in addition to allowing the buttons to latch mechanically also pushes on a switch stack which enables the selection process to occur the linkages that are attached to the letter and number buttons also press on switch stacks and they are wired such that both Stacks need to be activated simultaneously for the selection sequence to start essentially there's a switch in the number stack wired in series with another switch in the letter stack and those could very well also be wired in with the latch solenoid switch stack on an abstract level you can think of this as three buttons that all need to be pressed at the same time for something to happen one of which is in the control of the latch solenoid and so ultimately the Credit Unit there are two more switches inside this contraption but I couldn't tell you exactly what they do oh and outside of the contraption there are also two slider switches called LP conversions which is one applies to selections A1 through a0 and the other applies to B1 through b0 these switches will make those selections cost more to play as one of the features of this jukebox is the ability to play 7-inch LPS which run at 33 and a third RPM but that's not important right now so all this stuff we've been talking about is in service of making selections the Jukebox has 100 records in it and it can play both sides of each one so we need a way for it to locate and play one of 200 specific selections obviously the selection buttons have something to do with that but to understand why they need to be held in by the latch solenoid and also explain why all those switches and linkages are there we need to talk about the selection accumulator now remember this thing hangs underneath the Carousel of Records that's where it lives and its fundamental purpose is to flag specific locations for the rotating Carousel to stop and play a record and how it does that is pretty wild all right so here we are looking at the selection accumulator removed from the Jukebox this object is a round device about the size of a medium round cake so it's about 10 inches across or 25 centimeters and four or five inches thick something like 10 to 12 centimeters looking at the underside of the selection accumulator we find a motor attached to a gear train which ultimately turns a gear in the very center of the selection accumulator then on the bottom we can see a brown printed circuit board that has a ton of wires soldered to it in various places all those wires then come together into a wiring loom which ultimately ends in a large connector looking now at the top of the selection accumulator we can see that the bulk of this device is actually empty we are looking at the top of that printed circuit board that all the wires connected to and one thing that I want to make clear is that there is no componentry on this board in fact calling it a circuit board is a little bit of a misnomer this is made of the same material as a circuit board and it has a bunch of wires soldered to it like a circuit board but those wires are Simply Connected to contact patches in various shapes so the bulk of this board is brown and insulated but we have a ton of differently shaped patches which are then soldered to the wires underneath now sitting on top of this printed circuit board is an Armature that spans the diameter of this circular device it's attached in the center to the Gear we saw below so this Armature will actually spin around as the motor turns on either end of this Armature we find an electromagnet now these are very important for the function of making selections and I'll explain that as we go on so to recap picture a round printed circuit board with a bunch of differently shaped contact patches that are soldered to the wires coming out the bottom of the selection accumulator and on top of that circuit board we have an Armature which will spin around and that has an electromagnet on each end so now surrounding the perimeter of this circuit board and making up the majority of the object's height we have a series of 200 pins now these pins are flat metal blades roughly eight centimeters long long and just about a millimeter thick and every other pin has a section cut out of its top what we'll find is if you look at one pin the left hand section is missing and then the next pin the right hand section is missing and that alternates with every other pin these pins physically represent the Selections in the Jukebox and the reason for the alternating notches is because the record changer can play either the a side or the B side and that's how it distinguishes between the two we'll explain all that in just a moment but the critical thing about these pins is a spring on every single one wants to pull it upward but they are resting on the smallest of catches so that they won't they're stuck down however if they get moved inward ever so slightly that catch will be released and they will pop up in this shot I'm just barely touching them with my finger and you can hear them click as they stick up from the rest of the pins now they don't even move a centimeter they move a very small amount but that's all we need for the record changer to be able to locate a record so now you may have already figured that the electromagnets are what pull those pins inward so that they will pop up and that would be correct so now we need to talk about how that electromagnet is going to get behind the correct pin and how it's going to fire in just that position so remember all those contact patches well here's where they come in we have broadly three different zones of contact patches here uh there's the outermost Zone which has to do with the selections and then we have two inner zones that do other things and I'm gonna start with them on the bottom of the Armature there are feelers that are physically reaching down and touching the surface of the circuit board and we actually have a grand total of I gotta think through this 10 feelers they are arranged in five pairs and first I'm going to talk about a single pair at the far inside part of the Armature so remember these feelers are reaching down and touching the surface of the circuit board and they are electrically conductive and interface with the contact patches so at the very center we're going to find two rings one of which is continuous and the other has a gap at 12 and 6 o'clock these rings are connected to a pair of wires coming out of the selection accumulator and if they should become electrically common or they become bridged what that's going to do is it's going to energize a relay the two feelers hanging down the bottom of the Armature are actually just shorted together so if The Feelers are touching both sides of this ring that relay will become energized and what that relay does is actually turn on the motor of the Armature this device like many things in electromechanics is partially self-powered to ensure that it makes a complete cycle whenever it gets started and in this shot the selection accumulator is hooked back up to the Jukebox but it's not where it's supposed to be it's just sitting on the floor every single time I push the Armature by hand just a little bit it Springs to life and makes a 180 degree rotation before stopping again this is happening because of those feelers and those rings at the 12 and 6 o'clock position one of The Feelers is in the gap on that broken ring but if it's out of either of those positions well suddenly that feeler has moved on to the ring so now The Feelers are Bridging the two rings together which sends power to that relay which in turn sends power to the selection accumulator motor so it starts turning and because those rings are continuous until the 12 o'clock position while it's just going to keep on going until it gets there and the one contact slips off the ring so the relay opens up and the power is cut now a complete cycle is only 180 degrees in this case because we have the electromagnet on each end of the Armature there's no reason for it to make a complete circle and that also allows us to use another pair of feelers in fact two pairs of feelers to do two different things with each rotation so now just outside of the Rings we were talking about well we have another pair of rings these are larger because it's a bigger diameter however these are actually different between each half of the selection accumulator you'll find that on one side we actually have a solid ring and then a whole bunch of little dashes so the outside ring is broken up in multiple locations and then on the opposite side we actually don't have a lot it's mostly blank but there's just a couple of sections that have two contact patches next to each other we can see a wear pattern on the surface of the circuit board because The Feelers have been spinning around on this thing for decades but the actual contact patches on the right hand side they're very scant these contact patches can do a whole bunch of things in sequence so let's talk about the bigger one that has all of those dashes on it if you can imagine the inside ring is providing a source of voltage and the outside ring with all those tabs is a different place for the voltage to go so we have those two feelers just like before riding along these contact patches as the Armature spins and the one is a constant Supply voltage bridged to another which will touch a number of contacts in sequence so what this is really doing is this is sending voltage to one location then the next to the next then the next then the next to the next all automatically without us having to do any sort of wonky circuitry because remember that's what electromechanics is it's electrical Simplicity made possible by mechanical complexity if we want a number of different things to be activated in sequence all we need to do is build this device which will power itself once it moves out of a home position and makes a sweep across a number of contacts so that they get power one after the other you can think of this like a row of buttons that are being pressed but instead of buttons that each have their own switch contacts inside it's just one continuous ring being bridged across several dashes of contact patch material now several of the patches in my particular jukebox don't actually do anything because they powered optional features so for example those LP conversion switches that I talked about well this would be one way that you could remove multiple credits so if you had a selection which cost say three credits well you would have the Armature sweep across and fire the countdown solenoid in the Credit Unit whatever it's actually called and go click click click and take off three credits but there were also even more expensive selections they were called like the red button and the gold button and they might take off five credits so that's what's going on with all these patches the Armature could Spin and go up up fire the deduction solenoid five times and there go your five credits but one of the features that is absolutely enabled here is a brief release of the latch solenoid if we go back to the clip of me just pushing this by hand the camera is not positioned well for you to be able to hear it but listen closely and you might hear the chunk of the latch solenoid briefly letting go and then pulling back in foreign foreign that's happening because right before the selection accumulator gets back to its home position one of those contact patches is sending power to a relay which will flick off the power to the latch solenoid I'm not sure because I don't have the schematics with me but I believe the latch solenoid is wired through the normally closed contacts of a relay and so if that relay gets pulsed briefly it will actually lose power on the solenoid so now we've established that the inner contact rings of the selection accumulator will ensure it always makes a complete cycle and the outer contact rings can do various things simply because of the fact that the physical location of The Feelers riding below the Armature changes as the Armature spins around so now we get to talk about the meat and potatoes which are the hundreds of contact patches on the outside perimeter it's actually 220 so hundreds might be a stretch but anyway so the electromagnets on each end of the Armature of course they also have feelers reaching down and touching the surface of this circuit board these feelers are differently shaped because they have to be very narrow on account of the fact that the outermost contact patches are very very skinny these contact patches are literally one two hundredth of the circle they're actually slightly less they are one two hundred eighth if I've counted the gaps in the pins correctly and these patches represent the numbers one two three four five six seven eight nine and zero and then they repeat these patches are wired into the actual buttons on the keyboard you may have already guessed that but that's why we have one two three four five six seven eight nine zero every single button on the keyboard has a wire coming down into the selection accumulator and touching these patches in the case of the number patches they repeat every 10 patches and you can actually see on the bottom the wiring loom has a ton of ivory wires just looping repeatedly because they only need to start at one of the contact patches and then just Loop to the 11th the 21st the 31st the 41st all the way until the 191st right I think that's right and then just inside from the very edge of the circuit board we have these wider contact patches that span 10 number patches can you guess what these connect to that's right the letter buttons so when you press a letter and a number button what you're doing is you're creating a complete circuit across one letter patch and all of the number patches when the Armature spins around the electromagnets are reaching down with their feelers and touching every single combination of letter and number patches and once it gets behind the correct pin it will find a complete circuit across say F and nine fire the electromagnet attract the pin that is right behind towards it and then the pin will pop up this is why the buttons need to be held down for the entire selection process because we need the source of voltage between letter and number button to stay there until the selection accumulator has made an entire sweep but then of course when it's done with its sweep we need the buttons to pop back out so another selection can be made and that's why the inner contact patches will briefly pulse power to that relay to disable the latch solenoid and reset everything so now finally we can listen to the selection accumulator making actual selections I'm doing a sequence here so that the selections occur later and later in the sequence so I'm selecting A1 C1 E1 G1 and J1 and you'll be able to hear how the click of the pin popping up happens progressively later in the sequence of making the selection in this clip by the way the turntable the record changer is disabled so the only noise we'll hear is the selection accumulator foreign so we have now established how selections get made we've talked about the selection accumulator we've talked about the buttons and we've talked about the pins that will pop up for each and every selection but there's one last thing the selection accumulator does which we haven't talked about yet and that is turn the dang jukebox on so towards the end of its sequence not at the very end it happens a little bit before the end one of those two patches gets bridged by The Feelers and that sends power to the reset magnet this reset magnet is part of yet another weird mechanical Contraption and all that it's there to do is turn on the jukebox and turn it off when it's done playing a record this contraption is sitting on the metal plate that the carousel is on so it's actually like between the Carousel and the selection accumulator and this unassuming little leaf switch this tiny little switch is the main power switch for the record changer mechanism if these contacts are touching the record changer is awake and if they're not touching well it's off so the reset magnet pulls on part of this contraption which will reset it and cause the contacts to touch I'll explain why we have this contraption later on but this will just give you that context that the power switch is here and the selection accumulator is firing the magnet which ultimately closes that switch and when that switch is closed the record changer has gone from its first to second of three modes there are only three things the record changer can do and they are nothing so stand by scanning and then playing so that power switch kicked us out of standby and put us into scan mode so now that we are in scan mode we will finally piece together what the heck is the purpose of all those pins and why is the selection accumulator even there so remember that the selection accumulator lives directly below the Carousel of Records the carousel records is a big circular object and right below we have the circular selection accumulator with all of those pins for each and every selection attached to the bottom of the Carousel of Records we have yet another weird Contraption I don't remember exactly what this thing is called but we are going to call it the scanning mechanism the scanning mechanism is mechanically linked to the position of the Carousel of Records so as the carousel rotates the scanning mechanism will also rotate and the scanning mechanism is composed of two micro switches that are connected to little copper feelers that are riding just above all those pins there is a tiny amount of clearance just two millimeters or so between these little copper feeler arms and the pins we've been talking about the live little feeler arms are connected to these little readout micro switches they're labeled readout 1 and readout 2 and they correspond to side a and side B of the record so these little feeler arms are sweeping over all of the pins as the carousel rotates and if there's a pin that's sticking up well the feeler is going to collide with it the motion of the carousel Turning and pushing the feeler into the pin will eventually cause this readout switch to close and that will energize either the side one or side two relays and that is why the pins have those notches taken out of them because we're dealing with a circle we can't really describe things in terms of right and left so we'll go with inboard and outboard and every other pin has a notch taken off of the inboard side then the outboard side these feelers that reach down and hover over the pins they hover from both sides so we have a feeler on the outboard side that's readout 2 and a feeler on the inboard side that's readout one so effectively The Notches that are taken out of the outboard side will cause readout 2 to always miss those pins even if they're sticking up readout 2 will just go right past the notch but readout 1 will hit that pin because there is no notch on the inboard side and of course the opposite is true if we have a pin sticking up that has a notch on the inboard side well readout 1 will slip right past it but readout 2 will hit the PIN so again the purpose of these notches in the pins and these two feelers is so that we can tell the two sides of each record apart the inboard feeler represents side a and the outboard feeler represents side B I also want to note that because we have two adjacent pins that represent the same record in the carousel these feeler switches are adjustable we need the carousel to be in the same position for either pin so effectively one of The Feelers is reading a little farther ahead than the other and that can be adjusted and calibrated to make sure everything works correctly the scanning mechanism by the way because it's attached to something that goes round and round in a circle isn't connected to the rest of the Jukebox through wires but instead has five feelers much like we've been talking about on the selection accumulator reaching up and touching five slip rings on a sort of board there so the electrical connection between the scanning mechanism and the rest of the machine is accomplished through a a slip ring pickup basically okay and now here's where we get to bring up that whole electrical Simplicity mechanical complexity Thing Once More when either the side one or side two relays gets energized from the readout switches literally all we are doing is redirecting power from the motor that turns the Carousel and instead sending it to a different motor called the main cam motor that's it all the master power switch that the selection accumulator closed really did was start sending power to the motor that turns the carousel it also sends power to the Carousel lock magnet which is what's making that loud buzzing the motor is actually pretty quiet but fundamentally that's all that switch does it just gets the carousel spinning when the readout switches hit a pin and they energize the side one or side 2 relay the power source from the carousel motor gets redirected to the main cam motor what is the main cam motor you ask well what a great question so the main cam motor which is part of the whirlamatic mechanism is responsible for oh my gosh so many things in this clip I've actually got the Jukebox turned off and I've disconnected the main cam motor and connected it to a simple plug it's actually a 120 volt motor when I turn it on you're gonna see that a lot of the automated functions you would assume a jukebox does are all being driven by this single motor foreign what we are seeing here is the record transfer arm grab a record pull it out of the carousel plop it onto the turntable let go of it then the tone arm move on top of the record drop into the lead-in groove and then finally we see that all happened in reverse the tone arm picks up goes back to its home position the record transfer arm grabs the record again picks it up off the turntable and puts it into the carousel this is entirely mechanical this whole process is happening because of one motor spinning think about all the things that need to be accomplished here from the beginning we need the little record grabby thing to actually grab onto the record and then we need to pull the record transfer arm back away from the carousel turn it sideways and then put it onto the turntable then we need to Again release the little grabby arm and actually move the turntable slightly so that the record is moved away from the arm that way it can spin freely then we need the tone arm to move on top of the leading groove of the record and the tone arm needs to drop down so it actually lands on the record oh and also the record turntable needs to be turned on so it starts spinning and then finally we need to be able to do all that again in reverse and it's pretty wild when you consider that this is a purely mechanical device it's just one electric motor turning a huge series of cams pretty slowly and those cams are just making all this stuff work and trust me when I say a huge series of cams I am not exaggerating so the electric motor that actually drives this thing is hanging underneath the record changer and it drives a gear reduction drive because this cam mechanism runs actually quite slowly it runs at about 7 RPM it takes roughly nine seconds for an entire cycle to complete now since I haven't really said it in case you're not familiar cams are basically not quite round objects that something is riding against so as the shape of that object changes the thing riding against it will move the classic example are the tappets on the camshaft of an internal combustion engine which opened the intake and exhaust valves but in this case we're doing a ton of different stuff so the main cam the reason why this is called the main cam motor in the main cam relay is not quite a gear it's a big metal Circle which has gear teeth on its Edge which I guess that is a gear but uh anyway the main cam the gear teeth are really just so the motor can drive it and in set to this round circle there is a vaguely heart-shaped Groove now sticking into that Groove is basically like a running cam it's just kind of it's running inside of a Groove so it's still it's still a cam but it's a little bit different than you might be used to and so as the cam rotates the thing sticking inside of it is going to be rocked back and forth because that Groove is heart shaped as that rocks back and forth it actually pulls down on another geared piece and that is attached to the record transfer arm so really this is that's the most complicated thing going on here because it's hard to describe and um it is also the most robust piece of this contraption but of course moving the record transfer arm is just one of many tasks so stacked to the right of the main cam we have a series of what I believe are nylon cams there's at least five and there might actually be some more that I can't see and these ones well some of them push on levers one of them actually pulls a cable and uh because this is all in one location but there's a number of different things we have to do that's why we have these rather odd linkages cables pulls guides there's just a whole bunch of stuff that is ultimately coming around to this contraption and riding against one of those cams so that as it rotates different mechanical things are accomplished depending on the position of the cam so it's all mechanically programmed in this big circular thing so that as it makes a rotation different things are getting pulled pushed tugged and even more as we will discuss shortly but and if it's not obvious I inserted this later because I realized I didn't really explain the cams that much uh keep in mind that this one motor is doing all those things we talked about just having a motor run pulls the record out of the carousel puts it on the turntable releases it uh moves the tone arm and it actually does some stuff that I haven't even talked about in this video but that is all happening because this single motor is spinning but of course the main cam motor doesn't just have power on continuously or the Jukebox would be useless so I told you that when the readout switches hit one of the pins the side one or side 2 relay will redirect power from the carousel motor to this motor the one we've just been looking at well cool but now what see in addition to all that mechanical stuff we also need the whirlamatic to stop in the middle of its sequence so that the record can actually play and we also need to find a way to put the selection pin back because imagine if the feeler arm is still touching that pin well now the Jukebox is stuck in this state forever so as part of the wordlematic mechanism we have three control switches that are again absolutely essential to all this stuff happening so perhaps the most important switch here is the transfer switch this is a little micro switch and it has the same exact function as those contact patches on the selection accumulator which Keep It In Motion whenever it's not in its parked position if we go back to the clip where I have the main cam motor running continuously we'll see that the transfer switch is depressed by the actual surface of the cam it's running against nearly continuously and it's just let go for just a moment when the record changer arm is back and it lets go the record so again the transfer switch whenever the record changer arm is out of its home position is pressed in but see the transfer switch actually has three wires going to it that means this is a make or break switch so we have a common contact and one contact is normally open and the other contact is normally closed so when the switch is pressed in it's redirecting which wire is common to the middle wire essentially now again I don't have the schematics in front of me to verify that what I'm about to tell you is 100 accurate from a circuit design perspective but the reason the transfer switch has to both give power to the main cam motor whenever it's depressed and also take power away from something else is that we are about to cause a conflict that the transfer switch will prevent from becoming a problem so remember the main power switch for the record changer just sent power to the motor that turns the carousel then a feeler hit a pin so a relay closed which redirected that power to this main cam motor then as soon as it was out of its home position the transfer switch was depressed so that way the motor will continue to turn if for some reason we lose the signal from the readout switches and here's the thing we have to lose that signal because if we don't push the pin back down the carousel will never move again so the very next thing that's going to happen as the record transfer arm is pulling the record out of the carousel is that second control switch gets activated by a cam on the whirlamatic mechanism that switch is called the cancel switch and this will send voltage to a pair of solenoids on the readout mechanism which will push the pin back down if you listen closely to this clip you'll hear a dink dink happen shortly after the carousel stops and that is that solenoid firing so now here's why we have a conflict we've put the pin back which means neither readout switch is tripped so the carousel wants to move however we cannot let the carousel move because the record transfer arm is not back in its home position so the transfer switch in addition to making sure that the whirlamatic will get back to the home position now that we've lost the signal from the readout switches we'll lock out the carousel to make sure that it does not move until it's back to that home position I hope this makes sense again I'm just talking about this verbally and I hope that if you can't see what we're talking about uh this makes some sense to you and even if you can see I hope it makes sense because it's a little bit convoluted but again all that we had happened was the main power switch closed so the motor turned on for the carousel to start looking for a record to play then the feeler hit the pin so a relay energized which redirected power from the carousel motor to this main cam motor then as soon as it started moving we hit the transfer switch to make sure that it keeps moving because we are about to get rid of that signal by pushing the pin back down and once we've done that we now have a conflict because two things want to move but we need to make sure that the carousel motor does not move so earlier I said that the record changer had three modes there's standby scanning and playing initially we got into the scan mode because the main power switch closed and then when one of the readout switches hit a pin that effectively served as an interrupt to the scan mode and then put us into play mode the transfer switch is now acting like an additional interrupt to make sure that we stay in the play mode until the record changer arm is put back but we actually need one more interrupt because we want to play the record remember if the main cam motor just keeps on going it's going to put the record right back so that is where our third control switch comes in in the very middle of the sequence of pulling the record out of the carousel putting it on the turntable in the middle of the Cam's rotation there is a little lever that will press on the play switch now the play switch is also two switches in one the first thing that it does is it actually mutes the auxiliary input to the amplifier so you can actually have the Jukebox hooked up to like a radio tuner and playing the radio but then when you make a selection it will mute that and actually play the record but the other thing that this switch does is it serves as an interrupt to the main cam relay so basically when this switch gets pushed in we have broken the circuit path through all these other switches to shut off the main cam motor the play switch gets depressed right after the tone arm lands on the record and once it's depressed the Jukebox enters a really weird Frankenstein zombie state everything wants to move but it can't for various reasons so remember the main power switch is closed which means that the carousel wants to be turning however the transfer switch is pressed in because there were lamatic mechanism is out of position so the carousel motor is locked out but the transfer switch is also trying to send power to the main cam relay to keep the orlimatic mechanism turning but because the play switch is pressed in that circuit is broken so the main cam relay is not pulled in and the main cam motor does not turn everything wants to turn right now but because of the physical position of the whirlamatic mechanism and the fact that it's pressing on the play switch it's stuck to get us unstuck all we need to do is bypass the play switch and how do we do that why with the tone arm switch so when the tone arm reaches the lead out groove of the record it's going to press on another micro switch and that will actually jump the current path around the place which essentially so once the record is over we've bypassed the lockout on the play switch which which is going to start getting the warlimatic mechanism going we actually have an interesting thing happening here where the tone arm switch is not exactly working right and we hear this pulsing as it's trying to bump the main cam motor with these pulses the motor is turning just a little bit we can actually see the cam move slightly but until it moves enough to let go of the play switch it's not quite on its way [Music] however eventually it gets there the place which is let go and now the transfer switch is able to keep the warlimatic mechanism turning again so it picks the record up off the turntable puts it back into the Carousel and then once it lets go of the record the transfer switch gets released and now the carousel will turn again [Music] now that the carousel is turning we can finally discuss the purpose of that weird Contraption for the power switch because you can make a selection while a record is playing there's the possibility that you could make a selection behind the one that is currently playing now if the Jukebox were designed to turn off when the record Carousel gets back to its home position then that record wouldn't play it would turn itself off and that would be bad people would not like that so there is a latching mechanism that has to be struck two times before the Jukebox turns off you can hear a loud click here that is the carousel hitting that mechanism this occurs right when it's on the record position A1 the first time it hits this mechanism the carousel just keeps rotating and that ensures it's going to make another complete 360 degree search in case there is a selection that was made behind the one it was just playing but when it gets back to the home position the second time it will in fact shut off so the reset magnet the thing that the selection accumulator pulls power to to turn the jukebox on was resetting this little mechanism and every time you make a selection it fires that magnet so regardless of how many times the carousel has turned around if it's made it past once it's going to reset that mechanism and it will take two complete rotations to shut off it's actually a very clever and smart design feature and undoubtedly saved many complaints [Music] [Music] so yeah that's about it this thing is wildly complex but not really there's only seven relays in the entire jukebox that make this whole thing work it's just a clever arrangement of switches and cams to make sure that things happen in the right sequence and other things cannot happen when things are in the wrong position now the last thing that I haven't talked about yet is how the record changer changes sides we know that there's a different feeler for side one and side two but what does that do well as the record changer arm pivots back from the record Carousel it has a sort of weird gear train at its pivot it looks something like an automotive differential and there's a pin on each side of this gear train that pin when it gets stopped is what causes the record changer arm to actually start turning as it falls down that way though it goes from a vertical position to a horizontal position we can change which pin gets stopped so there's a little mechanism that moves left and right to change which of those pins gets caught and if the side one readout is the one that's activated the side one relay in addition to stopping the carousel motor and all that stuff will send power to a solenoid that moves that bracket over so essentially if we have selected side one then that relay energizes which pulls in that solenoid and that changes which direction the record changer arm will land or which direction the record changer arm will pivot before it lands onto the turntable and speaking of electromechanics and lockouts another thing that happens with side 1 and side two well you could select both sides of the same record so how's it going to deal with that well side one has a priority over side two so if both feelers are activated at the same time essentially so long as the side one relay is energized the side 2 relay cannot energize that is also by the way how it knows which cancel solenoid to send voltage to it depends on which relay is pulled in and I am not 100 sure but I'm pretty sure that there is a capacitor in line with the side one relay to make sure that it stays held in for longer than it has a voltage supplied to it that's Again part of the sequencing issue we need the side one relay to stay pulled in until the cancel switch is no longer being fed voltage that way only the side one pin gets rejected and not side one and two so again I know I'm just running through this really fast but if both the side one and side 2 feeler switches get activated at the same time well the side one relay will prevent the side 2 relay from pulling in and that way it will play side one first cancel that pin and then when side one is over we will have that weird scenario where it grabs the record puts it back into the carousel but because the side 2 readout is still depressed it just pulls it right back out again and place the other side but that I think is it I'm gonna run through this once more and then we'll wrap up so we drop a quarter into the Jukebox that adds a certain number of credits to the credit units if the credit unit has credits on it it will send voltage to the latch solenoid the latch solenoid is pulling on the weird little Trident linkage and one of the things that does is close a switch which allows us to make a selection and it will hold down the letter and number buttons when we press them when we press a letter button we create a circuit path on the letter patch on the selection accumulator and then when we press the number button we complete that circuit path across all of the corresponding number patches on the selection accumulator the instant both buttons are pushed in the selection accumulator gets a burst of voltage which kicks it out of its parked position and then it will keep going until it gets back to the home position as it rotates around the electromagnets are sweeping behind all those pins and when it gets behind the PIN for the selection we've made it bridges that circuit created by the buttons fires attracts the pin towards itself and the pin pops up then right when the selection accumulator is back to its home position it pulses a relay inside the Jukebox which will release the latch solenoid so pop the buttons back out and fire the reset magnet and turn on the record changer at this point we have a pin sticking up in the selection accumulator and the carousel motor has power to it to start turning the readout switches below the carousel will eventually run into the pin so whatever pin we ran into the switch gets activated and that redirects power from the carousel motor causing it to stop and sends it to the main cam motor which grabs onto the record and starts pulling it out of the carousel as that is happening the main cam hits a switch the cancel switch which sends voltage to a solenoid which pushes the pin back down and the transfer switch because it is pressed in by the cam will prevent that from causing the carousel to start turning again so we keep going we pull the record out of the Carousel and we plop it onto the turntable then the record gets released the turntable moves over a bit and the tone arm comes down over the record and drops on the lead-in groove right after that happens the main cam hits the play switch which puts everything on pause we now have everything wanting to move but it can't the record plays and at the end of the record the tone arm goes into the lead out Groove and once it gets to the center it trips the tone arm switch which bypasses the play switch sending power again to the main cam relay to get the main cam turning once the main cam has released the play switch it will keep going on its own and it lifts up the turntable or it lifts up the tone arm puts it back grabs the record lifts it off the turntable puts it into the Carousel and right when it lets go of the record the transfer switch is released so power is once again redirected from the main cam relay and back to the Carousel motor all right [Music] foreign Carousel is turning again it hits its home position A1 and we hear that click but it's still searching for records just in case you had made another selection and then when it gets back to its home position we hear that click again the main power switch opens and we are done so I hope this video made sense and that you enjoyed it this is probably the most difficult sights and sounds video I will ever make especially since I had no intention on making this series when I filmed all this b-roll but I hope that it was valuable to you and I hope that it was at least somewhat entertaining thank you very much for watching and I will see you again soon

Channel: Technology Connextras

Views: 80,043

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Id: ChtJ8gUuQWY

Length: 69min 2sec (4142 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2022