Repairing a Seeburg KD200

[flicker177]

Hello all,

I'm trying to help a friend get a 1957 Seeburg KD200 jukebox working. It had the classic "scans twice, plays nothing" issue. I found that the TEU had a bad 2050 thyratron tube as well as many leaky and out-of-tolerance paper and electrolytic capacitors. I replaced those caps and the tube.

This just exposed a new problem. If I initiate a trip, the mechanism loads a record and starts playing it but there's no audio. (I believe it doesn't unmute.) The tonearm will not cause a reject at the end of the record. If I initiate another trip, the record is returned to the magazine but the mechanism will not scan again, it remains stuck at the same selection.

From what I read, this sounds like a gunked up clutch is likely. I've read everything I could find (I've ordered Ron Rich's mechanism guide but not received it yet) and I've not found a detailed description of the exact way to remove the mechanism. My best guess from things I did find is that The whole mechanism including the record rack, tormat memory, and turntable would be removed as a unit, then the record rack would be removed to get entry to the clutch.

Once I gain access to the clutch, the instructions for cleaning and adjusting it are quite clear.

Could someone with experience shed any more light on removing the mechanism. If this info is in Ron's mechanism guide, I apologize in advance for a question with an easy answer. (I'm waiting for the book)

BTW, When I was working on the TEU it bothered me that I had no way to test the 2050 thyratron so I cobbed up a simple tester which works nicely. It indeed showed me that the original 2050 had failed and the replacement worked fine. I'll post a schematic if anyone's interested.

Thanks much in advance for any help or advice.

--Bill Thompson

flicker177

[Ron Rich]

Hi Bill,
Got the I & O manual for a model K ? It shows how to remove the mechanism ! You need not, and I recommend you do not remove the record rack, to get to the clutch. To get to the clutch, run the motor and lift the Detent lever. Once a record ( or blank space) is loaded, shut OFF the motor--lift the Detent lever, and turn the motor coupler by hand watching the safety plunger-- it is probably slow to act, and the clutch dog link is getting caught on it. Once the plunger is clear, you should be able to run the motor and park the mech on the RH side-- Yes, instructions are in the guide ( where did you purchase it-- I am currently out of them ?) Ron Rich

[flicker177]

Hi Ron,
Thanks for the quick reply, that's really good information. We have a bunch of manuals but not the I&O manual. I've ordered your book from needles4jukeboxes.com last week, they claimed to have it in stock. Hopefully it will be here soon. I'll wait for it before we start poking around. I'm more an electronics than a mechanical guy and I like to "do no harm." Thanks again!
--Bill Thompson
flicker177

[Ron Rich]

Hi Bill,
Yep-- he probably has a few--he's "on my case" for more -- LOL-- Simple mechanism removal on all Seeburgs-- remove the two pins (one on each side) in the slides--slide the mech out after removing all plugs--and anything in the way like the title drum, on a K model---Ron Rich

[flicker177]

Dang...
I just got an email from needles4jukeboxes.com. They ran out of your book a week ago. They'll let me know when they get more. Is there a reliable place to get this book these days?
--Bill Thompson
Flicker177
Rochester, NY, USA

[Ron Rich]

Hi Bill,
Yep-- you cooda bought it directly from me-- I got ONE ! left-- Ron Rich

[flicker177]

I'll take it! How do we do this?

[Ron Rich]

Hi Bill,
Just like it says in the parts for sale section-- you contact me at :[e-mail] --payez me "da money", and I ship it to you !
Simple-eh ? Ron Rich

[flicker177]

OK, I found it. The subject on your post "Onaccounta ah'cause !" didn't make it obvious ;-)
I sent you an email.
--Bill

[Ron Rich]

Hi Bill,
I gotz your email--guide's on it's way-- Hope it helps ! Thanks, Ron Rich

[flicker177]

Hi Ron,

Well, I think we're making some progress. We were still confused on how to get the pins out that hold the mechanism in, however it was pretty easy to remove the side glass and top metal from the cabinet and the mechanism is now as exposed as if it was removed. We have the yellow side cover on the right side off and if we could move the player assembly all to the right (looking from the front) I'm sure we could get at the clutch.

However we have a problem. We can trip the mechanism and it will go into play. If we trip it again, evidently the clutch is too stuck to go back into scan mode. So no amount of turning the motor shaft either manually or with the motor running will move the player assembly, its stuck in one position so we can't get to the clutch. Seems sort of like a "catch-22." Any idea how we might move it to the far right position without breaking something? I'm really hoping that if we can somehow expose the clutch that we can unstick it.

--Bill

[Ron Rich]

Hi Bill,
Didja find the safety plunger, and do as it says above ? Ron Rich

[flicker177]

Sept 1, 2021 12:07:51 GMT Ron Rich said:

Hi Bill,
Didja find the safety plunger, and do as it says above ? Ron Rich

Hi Ron,

We thought we could feel the safety plunger but we really can't see it. From what we could feel, it did indeed seem sticky. As a temporary help we worked a little penetrating oil on it and it seemed to move on its own now. This made no difference. The player goes into play mode fine, moving the tonearm to end-of-record position trips the mechanism. It looks like it tries to start a scan but does not. The carriage remains locked in fixed position.

It was seeming hopeless to move the carriage with the present situation so, with great fear, we removed the record rack and pop counter. We painted the base where it mounts so we can hopefully put it right back in the same position. Now at least we can see the whole clutch, gears, and cams that make this mechanism work. There's a horrendous amount of dirt, hair, and crud in there. Some pivot pins are sticky, the safety plunger is still a little sticky.

We powered up the jukebox without the record rack and Tormat contacts in it. using the manual trip lever we cycled the mechanism from play to scan. The play function looks fine and the tonearm at end-of-record will trip the mechanism. The record clamp opens, the record holder arm goes back to the carriage position, but the mechanism never starts scanning, it stays locked. Also I can't find anything sticky that I can push-to-help and start scanning. Something's really stuck.

Sorry if we've disregarded some advice. The situation is so stubborn we thought we needed a different approach. We have lots of pictures and I don't think we've hurt anything (yet.)

I'm away for a week, then we're going to get back to it. In the mean time my friend is doing a cursory cleaning of hair, dust, matches, cigarettes, etc. We'll keep you informed. This is certainly an interesting project and we really appreciate the help,

--Bill

[flicker177]

Well, we’ve made huge progress. The carriage was stuck, we couldn’t move it no matter what we tried so we removed the record rack (after painting its base mount so we could put it back exactly where it was.) That let us really get at the gummed up mechanism that we couldn’t move. It *sure* was stuck in many places. We removed the clutch and worked penetrating oil (not wd40) into it and everything freed right up. We freed up other pivots and linkages on the mechanism the same way. The safety plunger lever was particularly stubborn but it came around. We applied some fresh 20 weight oil to the clutch and other moving pivots and then put the clutch back in and replaced the record rack. Ron’s mechanism guide was a huge help with all this!

We powered up and immediately the mechanism worked perfectly. It will scan, pick up and play a record if I cause a trip, then put the record back and return to scan mode. Another trip plays another record. We exercised it a bunch and have yet to see the mechanism screw up once! What an amazing and solid piece of machinery!

So, we’re back to electronics problems and I’m more comfortable with that. We still didn’t have any audio. The little transistor preamp on the mechanism was totally dead. A few new capacitors, a new resistor, and fixing a bad crimp on a wire from the pickup and we now have lots of audio. We plan on going through the amp down the road but it plays OK now.

So, we have one problem left, we can’t select a record to play; we can only play via a manual trip. I have replaced leaky and tired paper and electrolytic capacitors on the TEU board. I replaced a bad 2050 tube. After doing that we can easily generate a trip by unplugging and re-plugging the TEU input RCA plug so we think the pulse amplifier and everything following is working OK.

We have done the “battery test” by touching (+) on a new D cell battery to the tip of the Tormat RCA plug and (-) to the ground, then plugging it back into the TEU. Still when scanning we find no selections.

So...we don’t yet know if the write-in from the selector buttons works properly but, assuming the “battery test” sets all the cores we do know that the readout doesn’t work but the TEU pulse amplifier and everything following does work because we can generate a trip from its input.

So...we’re suspecting trouble with the readout pulse that reads and resets the cores. The 0A2’s light violet color and the voltage feeding the 56k resistor is -300Vdc. The 56k 2W resistor is in spec, reading about 55.5k. When scanning the 0A2’s flicker. An oscilloscope on the jumper from J560-H to J559-G shows a nice, clean switching waveform from -300V. to 0V. as the detent switch opens and closes and it looks good scanning in both directions so it looks like the frog is making good contact to the Tormat memory unit. So...why doesn’t it work??

Next, we’re going to look at the output of the pulse amplifier during a scan with cores all set by the battery test. I’d like to see big pulses as each core is read (and cleared) and no or much smaller pulses on the next scan. Hopefully that will shed more light on the issue. If we get the readout working, then we can see if the write-in works.

Quite the project, stay tuned...

--Bill

[Jim Kaiser]

Did you ever get it to make selections yet? Mine just scans twice and parks. Will not pick up any selections. This is my first "old" Seeburg and I hear that the KD is more problematic than other models. So, being a newbie to this older version, I have no way of knowing what to look for, or how old or worn out anything might be on this one. I probably should have bought a different model. But I'm hoping that just simple cleaning and adjustment might get it going. I wish I had a little more of a knowledge base for this type of job. It's no fun flying blind here.
Jim