Repairing a Seeburg KD200

[jukenorman]

Hi Jim,
There is already a lot of information on the forum that will help with your problem if you look for it. The KD is no doubt more difficult than other tormat Seeburgs from that era because of the PCBs but the basic method of operation is the same - the 201 as an example. If your PCBs are in particularly poor condition, good reproduction replacements are available. Have you worked on solid state tormat Seeburgs?

Norman.

[Jim Kaiser]

Thanks Norman. I bought an SMC1 from a local operator about 20 years ago and it has been almost flawless. I did the recap myself and it seems to work ok for my first and only one. I did buy the new contol panel from Ron Rich a couple years ago but it didnt work properly so i put the old panel back in. I was going to send the new panel back to him so he could take a look at it and I procrastinated a little too long unfortunately. This KD might be more work than I want. I just wish I had more base knowledge. Like, the names of all the different components are all foreign to me, and what each component does exactly, etc. When I read posts of what others are talking about, I dont have a clue of what or where they are talking about, and whatever component it is. I am pretty good at mechanical stuff, but this jukebox technology is all new to me.

[jukenorman]

Hi Jim,
What you haven't reported is what condition your KD is in. Does it need a complete refurbishment or has work been done previously and what it mainly requires is just a repair? There is a huge world of difference there! There is some similarity with the SMC, the carriage is very similar for example. You could post some pictures if you want, you can use postimages to do that.

Norman.

[Jim Kaiser]

Its in nice condition. But i think its in nice "original" condition. Not sure what has been done to it over the years. It is missing the drum end covers and the light shield that attaches to them. To me, an amatuer at this, i would say that it is mostly all original and that means it is probably going to cause problems because of that. All kinds of updating is probably going to be needed.
Jim

[flicker177]

May 15, 2023 5:13:32 GMT Jim Kaiser said:

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

I know what you mean. Yes, we finally have everything working. Its amusing that the solution to the "scans twice, plays nothing" problem is to determine which one thing is malfunctioning, write-in, readout, or trip. In our case the answer was "all of the above" due to multiple issues.

Still, the KD200 is considered a classic from the "golden age" of jukeboxes, you can get it to work, and you'll have a wonderful piece of history.

We first got the trip working by replacing many leaky capacitors in the pulse amplifier, then the 2050 thyratron. Next we repaired broken wires on the Tormat "frog." Now the mechanism would stop and play some, but not, all records. We wiped some DeOxit D5 on the Tormat contacts. Then we could play all records via the battery test. So now we had the trip and readout working but we still couldn't make any selections via the buttons so write-in still wasn't working.

The write-in was the hardest thing to fix. First we replaced the capacitors in the write-in circuit and replaced the germanium "clamp" diode with a 1N4007 silicon diode. The write-in signal goes through several PC board edge connectors, through printed stepper switches on the RCSU1 board, through a special "blade" switch in the DPU and through the Tomat selector buttons. All of this stuff had problems. Normally the stepper switches which allow connection of "Wall O Matic" units just pass through the signals from the Tormat selector buttons. Since we were not trying to use any "Wall-O-Matic" units we jumpered this connection across the stepper switches which weren't making great contact. The blade switch in the DPU was badly tarnished and didn't make contact. We cleaned that up with DeOxit D5 contact cleaner. All the PCB edge connectors were badly tarnished as well. We cleaned those. Apparently 1957 was the first use of printed circuits and I can see why they went back to hand wiring for a bit in 1958. They needed to learn some hard lessons about PCB's.

Now, we could finally make some selections with the buttons but not all. Some more DeOxit in the Tormat selector buttons got them all working. At this point all selections work perfectly, the whole jukebox never misses a beat.

Next we replaced all the capacitors on the amplifier board and gave it a new pair of 6L6GC tubes. The 5U4 rectifier and all the smaller tubes were fine. We replaced the very worn styli with new ones from "NeedlesForJukeboxes.com." That make a huge difference in sound quality. Although not really "hi-fi" by today's standards it has clean sound with real "jukebox" character.

This was quite a project, I learned a bunch. Not for the faint-of-heart Since virtually nothing worked when we started, I got to learn and understand most of how these Tormat jukeboxes work. I'd have to say that the engineering department at Seeburg was fearless! The Tormat is amazingly clever for the mid 50's.

I hope this can help people doing similar restorations.

[dhutton]

Great information here. Thanks for posting.

[armandh]

the first is always the hardest BUT once done you can do most all from V through LS2
they mostly all work the same way save those native 33.3 RPM consoles