Sunday, May 27, 2012

North Pole Jukebox

I just helped a guy mend his jukebox at the North Pole.  Well. O.K. it wasn't The North Pole, but rather a town called North Pole in Alaska!  Yes..ALASKA!  :)
He was hung out to dry by the people he bought it off and got no help from them at all so when he asked for help it was an intriguing challenge.
The machine is a Wurlitzer Classic 2000, which is the new CD version of a W2000.  Actually that isn't technically true. Jukebox nerds will be interested to know that the top chrome piece of a Classic 2000 is actually a copy of the chrome from a 2100 (which is why when they were first launched it was called a Classic 2100.  So now you know.)
Anyway it was doing strange things, so he sent me a video of what it was doing and I came to the conclusion it was something to do with the cam that raises the clamp arm.  When he looked inside and sent me a photo of the gearbox I could see that one of them was seriously mangled.
All credit to him, he then managed to get the gear unit out of the jukebox, which is a job even I haven't done after 10 years of working with One More Time jukeboxes.  I think when you are living in the middle of Alaska you have to be somewhat resourceful or you get eaten by bears or something.  Anyway he did a brilliant job and sent me the complete gear unit with mangled cam.

As it turned out, rather than taking it all apart and changing the plastic cam, I had an exact unit taken from a scrapped hideaway unit so I sent that to him.

After a few days of head scratching and studying his photos he managed to get it all back together and now it is working!  Great job!