Looking inside the Amplifier of a Rock-Ola Jukebox - Factory Mods, Weird Hacks, Channel Repair

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[@JohnEricBooth]

Speaker Overlord. 😂😂😂 It actually looks as if it's silkscreened like that! All divine and encompassing power over the speakers.

[@LyonsArcade]

I wonder if somebody did that as a joke, and it made it through?

[@NewTestamentDoc]

I am amazed at how many electronic fixes you do without a lot of formal training! I love your deductive skills and insight as to where the problems lie. I have some formal training and I think just like you do. In fact, I'm thinking... check here! And, a few seconds later, you say... I'm going to check here! And its usually the same place. You, my friend, are a natural and great at this stuff!

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you D A, we try. We like working on them and figuring it out as we go, it's a good way to learn!

[@gregoryclemen1870]

I have done radio / T.V. repair for years. you can use a separate amplifier with a cap in series with the input that isolates the test amp and the amp under test, and connect a test probe. now you can probe and listen to each stage of amplification, including where you are loosing the signal. it is fast and easy to spot the problem( transistors, caps, and resistors).

[@LyonsArcade]

I've seen Shango do that but I haven't tried it yet, coming soon :)

[@gregoryclemen1870]

@@LyonsArcade , it is an absolute "TIME SAVER" I can track the problem in an "amp/ radio" in less than 5 min.. I only repair/ rebuild old radios/ amps now that I am retired. I also watch "SHANGO"( subscribed) he is a very good trouble shooter, and is very knowledgeable. as for myself, I like to share my knowledge!!!!, just like back in the day when I was "BLESSED" with the knowledge/ mentorship of the senior electronic engineer at "WLW" radio station ( who also built the local "VOICE OF AMERICA" transmitter station). he was the person who told me to get a degree in electrical/ electronic engineering, and I did!!!!. he was my neighbor, and I just about lived in that mans basement, we used all of his test equipment, and I soaked it up like a sponge.

[@patrickkwiatkowskisr8670]

Joe don’t sweat replacing caps. Mr Carlson’s Lab (radio guy) always replaces old caps.

[@adamdavies163]

I recently had a failed Bass driver that measured open circuit on the spade terminals, however you could appear to a get a good measurement by hooking onto the link braids between the terminals and speaker cone. Assuming bad solder joints I resoldered the link wires to the terminal plates, still the same which seemed very odd to me. Anyway after a lot of messing around and head scratching I figured that the copper braid itself had somehow fractured and was not conducting. I desoldered the pair of braids again from the terminal plate, cut the soldered ends off and resoldered the new ends to the terminals - fixed! The braid itself had somehow failed, yet visually looked OK. Bizarre, but that speaker is still working fine today.

[@nealdietz7063]

There is a company in St. PAUL MN. That Rebuilds 🔊 Speaker's, off Snelling Av. Couple Blocks south of I-94. They do Excellent Work...

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Neal!

[@MrIBM01]

Thank you !!! I just rebuilt a 477 Rockola using your videos. I couldn't have done it with your help. You rock.

[@LyonsArcade]

I knew you could do it!

[@stlmusic]

I had this same problem with my rockola. (Same model). I got lucky. I just flipped that stereo/mono switch back and forth about 20 times to clean the contacts. It’s been working fine for the past two years.

[@LyonsArcade]

Ahhh, that would probably do it, if one side was not making contact it would kill that channel

[@EsotericArctos]

I'd say this has had a dead channel for a while and the previous owner, or maybe the last operator, reversed the speaker at the bottom to compensate. The only thing I would slightly worry about if someone played is to make sure the phasing is right as it can really kill your bass response if the speakers are out of phase. Motorola use there own numbering scheme. You can likely find generic TIP type transistors to suit. It's just a Motorola thing. They do it to confuse us lol One thing I do enjoy about watching your repairs over many others is the fact you genuinely want to save these things. Sure, you need to make money from selling things, but you don't do it just for the money. It's so nice to see you do this because you want to save the machines too.

[@LyonsArcade]

In the near future i'm going to start doing some old radio and clock repair videos on the weekend in addition to the coin op stuff, I've got a lot of cool old stuff that's fun to tinker with, you're right I like saving them. Very cool little machine here.

[@robertmoore254]

The cone can't be fixed. The speaker has to be completely rebuilt.

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Robert

[@scottgm321]

This Rock-Ola was created for Led Zepplin's music. Immigrant song "we are your overlords!" . I've seen David Tipton repair speakers for vintage radios on his channel using some special tape or glue.

[@daveweston5158]

Hi Ron! So, I'm just curious; I noticed that there's a section of the speaker connections labeled for 70V... Is this intended for use with a distributed audio system (as in individual speakers, for example, one to a booth in a restaurant, with individual volume controls?)

[@LyonsArcade]

Yes they allowed you to hook up all kinds of stuff to it, motorized volume controls (that would have a little motor that turns the knob on the back of the machine, from the inside)... Wall Boxes, seperate speakers or every kind you can imagine, dollar bill acceptors, Microphones, etc.

[@pdaddyblake]

They are using that capacitor and resistors for some low pass filtering cheapest way to make a cross over I might have missed it was the sub on a different channel they can be reconed I do it just for fun maybe not cost effective the cone and voice coil parts are probably around 40 and u can by one for the same price the cone probably separated they kept playing it and the voice coil rubed and opened

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Andrew, yeah I'll bet they kept going with it

[@naytch2003]

Thank you Ronnie for the shout out again..from the shadow of your distant friend:)

[@LyonsArcade]

Glad you saw it!

[@kevtris]

you might want to get an audio tracing probe. it's basically a small audio amplifier with a probe so you can poke around on a pcb and follow audio through all the stages of like this amplifier; I was thinking the same awhile back when you were working on the sound problem on an arcade board. It'd be nice to be able to probe and listen to each audio chip for example on an arcade board to see which were outputting and which were not. A little cheap speaker and amplifier connected to a probe with a series 0.1uf capacitor works well.

[@LyonsArcade]

I'm going to get one eventually, i've got a bunch of radios I'm going to fix

[@kevtris]

@@LyonsArcade nice. you might want to get one with a detector mode then so you can trace the signal through the IF stages of the radios.

[@ovalteen4404]

I've heard of people repairing (and even rebuilding) speakers, but it's hard to imagine it being an economical way to go. As another commenter noted though, the copper braid between the voice coil and the contacts may have broken. I've had the braid break off before. Those two wires take a lot of punishment, as you might imagine. Possibly an easy fix, but possibly not.

[@LyonsArcade]

yeah I thought it had just broken loose or something, I've seen that before but they were both still connected.... may have been messed up at one of the joints or something though.... I think if it's an old speaker and you really need it like on an old radio without a field coil or something, it's probably worth fixing the actual speaker, but I usually just swap them on this more 'modern' stuff.

[@2011MoJo]

It's broke!

[@LyonsArcade]

it's always the same!

[@AvengerII]

Repair work The Fonz would be proud of! Quick, though -- Daddy Warbucks and Mr. Scrooge want their Pac-Man and Christmas Carol pinball machines fixed by Christmas Eve or the ghosts will paying you a visit!

[@issacehowardjr679]

Isn't transistors with PNP and NPN ... Positive negative positive and Negative Positive Negative? C,B,E = Collector, Base, Emitter. The base is what's gotta have the positive negative biasing I think. I use to love working in electronics.

[@LyonsArcade]

So THATs what those stand for, lol

[@1pcfred]

@@LyonsArcade N and P are semiconductor material types. N type has excess electrons and P type is depleted. In manufacture the silicon is "doped" with impurities to have the different characteristics. Then due to atomic physics the flow of electrons is modified in the depletion layer formed by the junction. Which is why they're called, "semiconductors". The material can both insulate or conduct depending on the charges present.

[@yesitreallyisme]

Great in depth fix again, well solved Ron.

[@andymouse]

Nice work and Merry Christmas ya all !....cheers.

[@naytch2003]

Bah..Humbug 😁

[@j-fbondon2068]

hey Man ! you should reach out to Mr Paul Olson of the channel Mr Oslon lab, he seems to always have the schematics on what ever he is working on ....he might be able to put you the right to track for schematics for that beast....nothing sader to see you struggle to figure out what's what...good luck ...and keep them coming it's best entertainment around here ! cheers!

[@user-sh9du2nv5y]

The last song you played I heard Glenn Miller's coming out of the grave to come after you and sue you in court for copyright infringement of course this is the joke for today.

[@LyonsArcade]

Shhhhh don't give them any hints :)

[@1pcfred]

It is the death of the artist that starts the copyright clock ticking.

[@yuwish6320]

Absolutely you can recone a speaker. Its fairly inexpensive, and easy to do. Kits are available at amazon. However, if the wires are still attached and the coil still reads open, then the speaker coil is blown and you need to replace the whole thing. On the opposite side, if the coil reads short, don't even attempt to use it. You'll blow the audio amplifier. We're talking fire and flames.

[@DjResR]

Probably the speaker killed itself when the cone broke, there's a very small tolerances inside. At this point it's dead weight._

[@lileveretteyoakumiii]

Yodelayheehoo

[@1pcfred]

I guess the next step in your repair skill building would be to learn how to trace signals. To be able to inject a signal into the input and follow it through the circuitry to the output. That would get you to a fault in a direct manner.

[@kegling2]

Would like to see you go through a Seeburg Juke in depth like you do with the Rockola Jukes. These are so informative. Thank you very much for doing these for us!!

[@LyonsArcade]

The Seeburgs are more complicated, I've worked on a few and own a bunch of broken ones :)

[@coreyschroeder6268]

@@LyonsArcade love to see some mor jukes on the channel. The 70’s seeburgs are so cool. I have a 72 USC-2 Firestar I’m fixing on. Needs a re-cap and some spit-shine, but it plays.

[@340ozzman]

HELP! Working on a Rockola 470 and I need a 100mf 75 volt capacitor and can’t seem to find one. Any help is appreciated 👍

[@LyonsArcade]

mf=uf and The voltage rating is the highest voltage that's allowed through it, so you can use one marked higher safely. So 100uf 100v for instance... www.ebay.com/itm/391959280299

[@340ozzman]

Thank you sir. Awesome. Love the channel.

[@340ozzman]

I changed the capacitor but still no sound on left speaker. The left speaker did make low crackling from high note sounds of music which didn’t happen before the capacitor. The right side works perfect. Swapped driver boards and the sounds reverse to other speaker side. So something wrong on the amp. Not sure what I can check next. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

[@danashcroft961]

The way you say Microfarad makes me laugh every time...Way to get a rise out of the haters...LOLOLOL

[@LyonsArcade]

Givin' 'em something they can feel

[@danashcroft961]

@@LyonsArcade LOL...I have a friend that lives in Raleigh North Carolina and if I ever go to visit him again I am definitely going to pay a visit to your shop as I love pinball machines. (had one when i was a kid), love Arcade games (grew up throwing my money into those) and have always wanted a juke box for my 7 in singles...just might be a bit pricey to ship all this stuff to portugal where I live (im from the UK originally) and also theres the problem of that we use 220 over here rather than 110 like in the states...but I definitely intend to visit your store if I am ever back over there again

[@1pcfred]

You have to get a dig in on all of the Michael Faraday fanboys somehow. I bet if Joe knew about Mike he'd be a fan himself. Michael had no formal education either. Which was something he did have to struggle with in the scientific community.

[@lawrenceveinotte]

Thanks for the effort

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you for watching Lawrence!

[@abrsvc5735]

MD8003 is a common package for 2 transistors in 1 package that are matched and used as a differential amplifier in the circuit. The TO220 transistors in this are MJE15028 and MJE15029. - Dan ABR Services

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Dan!

[@abrsvc5735]

RE: Speaker. Yes the speaker can be fixed by "reconing". The internal coil has been fried and would need to be replaced. If the parts are available (not so common any more), the coil, spider and cone can be replaced. (Spider is the orange piece holding the cone near the coil.) Also, the 4558 is a common op-amp IC available everywhere and cheap. It is used as a pre-amp for the record cartridge to equalize the signal for one. Dan - ABR Services

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Dan!

[@kevtris]

I like how they didn't even bother to paint/powder coat their metal enclosures, and just silk screened everything on the galvanized steel.

[@LyonsArcade]

It's a cool look...

[@naytch2003]

Touch of Bing Crosby at the end???😁

[@naytch2003]

Shhhhh you wanna get him booted off KZbin??? 🤨

[@LyonsArcade]

Nahhhhhh

[@naytch2003]

@@LyonsArcade 😁

[@jasonsteverson4609]

Hey Ron!!

[@LyonsArcade]

Hey Jason!

[@DLDietz]

@ Ron - I hate watching you struggle when you are chasing signals such as audio or pulses/clock circuits. Please find yourself a good used oscilloscope. There are many out there for a great price. You won't believe how time you can save using a scope.

[@LyonsArcade]

I own about 8 oscilloscopes

[@saskia6750]

yay she`s alive...alive :) sounding great too,thank you guys x

[@LyonsArcade]

Thanks for watching Saskia! Merry Christmas, are we still allowed to say that :) ?

[@saskia6750]

@@LyonsArcade Of course you are guys,thats what it is..we are old skool,merry christmas to you all,thank you for keeping me entertained..much love to you guys and many thanks 🙏ps.il never bow down to political correctness x

[@naytch2003]

Bah humbug..to political correctness

[@AllanSitte]

Amped up for amps.

[@PlumGurly]

That looks like a push-pull amplifier. You have an NPN and a PNP, and the output should be floating and ready to go to an audio transformer, speaker, next stage, or whatever. As for radio repair, those who work on tube radios nearly always shotgun the electrolytic caps. If you encounter wax/paper caps, you need to change those.

[@TeeborGames]

All hail our new speaker overlord, Rock Ola be thy name!

[@LyonsArcade]

Only when the red light comes on!

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

There must be a digital board set that can be used to replace those boards and add extra functions like hall, matrix and possibly DOLBY Pro-Logic Surround.

[@irieman442]

Aint that some crap... one of these has hmmh the bed on us. LOL.. That machine has a really broad selection of music in it. Obsession by Animotion and Waylon Jennings, can't imagine where this machine would have been installed. Play either end of that spectrum in the wrong place and you might find yourself at the wrong end of a beer bottle. I had my lunch fed to me by a cracked trace on a circuit board once. I must have looked at it a thousand times. I didn't find it until I was checking components with a meter. You know the one that starts with F and ends with E.. I never worked on a juke box. I have been surprised how sort of primitive they are compared to other equipment of the time. I guess they were trying to keep the redesigns to a minimum. I still worked and served the purpose. I am also amazed that they got kind of cheap looking. I would have thought they would have devised some gimmicks like the old bubblers. No fancy light shows or strobes. The pinball machines figured this out a long time ago.

[@LyonsArcade]

The NSM jukeboxes are much more complex as far as the amplifiers, etc. Also the late model Wurlitzers were like that, had a lot going on. I think they were just trying to make it super reliable and minimal.

[@naytch2003]

Will the wolf survive?

[@danijelcar5184]

Its alive😎👍

[@frankgagliano9677]

Great series Ronnie, Step by step just like on the pinball machines. That sounded great better that brand new. Thanks for filming Ronnie. See you on the next video.

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Frank! Did you get your dad's machine on 5 ball?

[@frankgagliano9677]

@@LyonsArcade no, I have been down to his place.

[@frankgagliano9677]

I will have him to call you.

[@iamnoone.]

That always sound so sweet. When there working

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Just wondering why they didn't use 5W Class A amplifiers which give less distortion.

[@andymouse]

Because they are inefficient and this is just a jukebox.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

@@andymouse They might be inefficient but sound is what some people go gaga for like the Final LT100 Power Amplifier.

[@andymouse]

@@DAVIDGREGORYKERR High Fidelity and Jukebox's are two terms you don't find together much.

[@waynegram8907]

Does anyone know why they added the factory modification of cutting the trace and adding a resistor and capacitor to both channels? I'm guessing it's a passive RC high pass filter to the speakers

[@DjResR]

Could be something missed in production and bodged on later, it was quite common in low production boards as redesign would cost more than bodging it on._

[@waynegram8907]

@@DjResR The question is what is the Bodged RC network doing? It looks like a factory Bodged job but for what reasons

[@DjResR]

@@waynegram8907 Probably a noise issue or a ground loop oscillation._