Juke box help and advice required

[twedspeed]

This is an old 1958 SEEBURG wall box , that I picked up on E-Bay a few years back , I originally held out plans of finding an old juke box to which I could connect it , but the only compatable ones are very rare and very expensive - I do like it as an ornament - But it could be so much more - All the selecter buttons still work , Is there anyway these impulses could be teamed up to a modern I-pod or somthing like that - I know its a big project and I,m way out of my depth here, but it would be so nice to make it more than just an ornament .
Can anyone direct me to somebody who may be able to advise me further on this matter .
Thank you Chris

[Enzo]

I can't quite read the model number on the serial plate in photo2.

The thing runs on 24VAC, there is a small autotransformer to drop that to 6v for the illumination lamps.

Three-wire connection I think - 24VAC, ground, signal

Credit is established within the box itself, that is the sub-assembly with the step up and step down solenoids.

Whenever there is sufficient credit, selections can be made. Pressing one number and one letter initiates the write-in sequence. The box then rotates that scanner, which causes a train of pulses to be sent down the signal line to the main jukebox. The selector switches are more or less in series, so the train of pulses cuts off when it reaches as far down the sting as your pushed button. There is a pause between the number and letter pulses, which the receiving jukebox interprets. The main juke has dual stepping units that are advanced by the pulses. One for letters, one for numbers.

As to making those 24VAC pulses convert to iPod, I'd have to say that is about as likely as adding a digital USB interface to your Thanksgiving turkey.

NAh, in fairness, it could probably be done, but it would be a task for an engineering group project at the university. You'd have to map out the alpha and numeric ranges, then calculate some translation into iPod addresses, then make a remote interface for the iPod, then engineer some sort of control interface to translate.

[twedspeed]

Thanks for your input any way Enzo -

[twedspeed]

Project direction change !.

Enzo and all who replied - Thanks very much for your input, I have looked into that "interaction" problem and the whole I-Pod idea may now be a bit too ambitious -
However someone suggested connecting the wall box to a remote CD jukebox - This might be a better Idea simply because theres plenty of old used CD jukeboxes for sale at the moment, as pubs & bars are replacing them with digital music formats, (and lets face it CD jukeboxes are never gonna be as collectable as an old wurlitzer) -
So its now a question of getting 1960,s tech to interact with 1980,s tech any thoughts on that little problem. ??.
And links to CD machine - operating information appreciated.

[Enzo]

That really isn't a different problem. It is not all that different from asking if we could play CDs on a vinyl turntable.

There is nothing inherently "jukeboxy" about jukeboxes. There was special circuitry inside - or available for the inside - the main jukebox to handle input from the remotes - the "wall boxes." That wasn't generic. A 1950s wall box will no more talk to an 80s digital control system than it will your ipod.

COnsider, the selection system is alpha-numeric, so you chose a song with K5, B4, R8, whatever. The box then generated a series of pulses - not unlike an old dial telephone - to encode that and send it along. There would be a train of pulses for the letter, and one for the number, with a times space between. At the jukebox end, a dual stepping unit was advanced. The number stepper would move up as many steps as the wall box told it, and then after the pause, the letter stepper would advance. Or maybe they did that in reverse order. Doesn;t matter at the moment. That selected an address and depending on the model it either completed a circuit to a tiny solenoid, which cocked a little selection lever, or it fired a pulse into a circuit that drove a core memory, and it reversed the magnetic field on a little core donut. If you understand why that is hard to intrface to an ipod, well, the jukeboxes at some point in the 1970s went to digital selection. No longer K4 and L7, selections were now made with three digit numbers, so selections looked like 103, 137, 212, etc. Seeburgs were still using the core memory, their "Tormat." Rockolas stuck with their reliable mechanical system, but digitally controlled.

But the control section and the play section are not related. If you have a row of 100 records, you could replace them with a row of 100 CDs, and still use a similar selection system. The fact that the recordings are digital on a CD instead of mechanical on vinyl had little to do with how the disc was selected.

Seeburg evaporated before the CD juke arrived. Rowe was the major brand in this area. Their control system was completely digital, no tormats, no levers.

Now having said all that, it CAN be done. I know there were some translators for Seeburg at least. A major wallbox installation at a large resaurant would be very expensive to replace when the box went digital. (Digital control, not digital audio), so when a new juke went in, there were converters in existence that allowed the old style wallbox like yours to contriol the newer "black box" digital control boxes. And I know of one group of engineers who actually invented a translator so that Seeburg wall boxes could control a Rockola box, or perhaps the other way around, I forget. But these were not things we cooked up in the back room at the shop here.

Your problem with CDs is amplified. Unlike vinyl, you not only must select a disc, but also a track.


A CD jukebox usually had like 100 CDs in it. We are talking $1000 to load it with music. Then every couple weeks a few more CDs. What has happened to the industry is the rise of the internet jukebox. Instead of filling the big chrome beast with $$$ of records, they now put the thing in there and connect it to the outside world. It still looks like a jikebox, but now it can offer 10,000 selections, because they don;t have to be in the box itself.

Through the 1990s and on, all the major jukebox makers produced retro boxes that LOOKED like the old Wurlitzers. COmplete with rounded top and bubble tubes all lit up. They were completely modern boxes, they just looked old.

There are a lot of things you could do here. All those buttons do have multiple switch contacts. You could probably gut the thing and wire up some sort of remote controls for a sound system. But expecting the actual selection circuits to translate would be a huge project.

The thing looks cool, make all the bulbs in it light and it makes a really neat table lamp. It would be simple enough to trick it out for freeplay - constant credit - so you could push the button, and the motor would spin and Ker-CHUNK the buttons pop back out. And one could easily commandeer a contact on that to trigger some event. Like a start button.

[Earl Norton]

"As to making those 24VAC pulses convert to iPod, I'd have to say that is about as likely as adding a digital USB interface to your Thanksgiving turkey."


LOL)