(image tag: suitcase turntable on the curb with a handwritten sign that reads, "DOES NOT WORK BUT COULD BE FUN TO FIX!")

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Listen, time is meaningless. It's November and it’s 2021, and earlier this summer, like a lucky dummy, I fulfilled a life-long dream and acquired a jukebox. The details are the kind of Portland-magical manifestation that pepper my last fourteen years living here: sometimes, a thing you want (but not a thing you need) just appears. It’s hard to explain. In this case, a neighbor of a friend of a coworker was moving and was tired of hauling his 322-pound music machine from place to place. We had a couple of phone calls and bonded over post-punk and old-Portland institutions and the pandemic. The juke had apparently previously lived in a local record store and a beloved restaurant and bar before ending up at his craftsman house up in NoPo. Still, I gave it a 50/50 chance it’d work out, because if I’ve learned anything from living on the west coast, it’s that people are flaky but they are also good-hearted, and you can’t tell if they’ll be one or the other or both. Obviously, it worked out. Jukeboxes are basically just massive appliances and no wonder this guy was sick of moving his: it took four of us and funny overall-style movers’ straps and a few trials to figure out the right way to lift something so cumbersome up and down stairs and through doorframes. 

There’s a whole other story about California, etc., but I'm just trying to document one thing at a time so I'm timeboxing this, trying to tell this story and not multiple ones, at least for now. And I’m rusty at writing to you—the “you” as newsletter recipient, which I suppose is just a 2.0 of the LiveJournal/DreamWidth reader—but a far cry from the “you” as viewer of a social media post, which I've basically forgotten how to even do, anyway. Regardless, it’s hard to get back in the habit of sharing anything personal online, even to a small distribution list. 

Okay. But back to the juke. Fast forward to plugging in a 1977 Rock-Ola Model 470 for the first time, and the whole thing at first looks like a haunted house — pulsing, strobing lights, the static sound of speakers after the last song at bar close. I wiggle the cord and dust bunnies floated out of the back of the machine. The keys didn’t light up and, aside from being empty of 45s, it was a far cry from playing a song. At this point I thought of electrical shock and fire and wiring mishaps and didn’t know where to begin. I had naively assumed a jukebox was in the ballpark of venue sound systems or home theatre surround-sound or something easy enough to troubleshoot. Let’s say turning it off and turning it on again didn’t solve my initial problems, so instead, a little crestfallen, I unplug the beast and let it sit for a couple days.  

And then a couple days later, I open the manual, and fire up a few YouTube videos, starting to learn how jukeboxes actually worked. From then on, my nights turned into mini sound-engineering workshops. Maybe one day I'll write a longform essay about it, but also maybe the hundreds of hours I spent on YouTube and jukebox forums will vanish into the ether of whatever it is we’re going through right now. But I did learn little nuggets of engineering: a bit about how all the componentry was connected; how the read-out and write-in works; what grabs the records; how the buttons and pins talk to the circuitry. 

Top to bottom, I worked my way through the belly of the machine. I verified connections and pins, I reconnected wires, cleaned contacts, lubricated all the moving parts, and continued down the rabbithole of jukebox repair videos to see what each component was supposed to do if things worked properly. I also learned, as with cars and motorcycles, men just cannot wait to tell you everything they know about obscure and/or analog tech—but, wow, bless them, for once: niche expertise might actually be a public service in the case of jukebox repair and maintenance? 

A couple things were interesting to me about jukeboxes in general, which is why I'm even writing this TinyLetter: the TILs. First off, prior to searching for information about how to disable the jukebox’s payment mechanism, I learned about the mafia ties to the music industry and jukeboxes (!) and specifically that Rock-Olas are named after a Mr. David Cullen Rockola, a real-ass/mafia person. I also went down a rabbit hole reading about juke joints (and juke etymology), which I had known a little bit about from researching my other big project (nbd just writing a semi-historical novel; at this rate I'll probably finish it in 2031). But back to the task at hand: I learned you do not ever want to use WD-40 on a jukebox (sorry to break the news, barkeeps), and that there’s many, many forums (jukeboxaddicts) and mailing lists (jukebox-list) with spirited debate about everything from how to clean a juke to the best kind of lubricant to use.

My number one go-to guy was the Joe’s Classic Video Games YouTube, an arcade repair shop in Rock Hill, North Carolina, for his series of in-depth videos that helped me demystify a scary electrical behemoth into something I could troubleshoot as a beginner. The videos aren't poised like an expert telling you how--they're exploratory and curious, a we're-in-this-together welcoming kind of vibe. Maybe I'm projecting. But it seems like the audience for jukebox repair videos is far larger than just folks like me trying to get an old juke working, so if you like knowing how stuff works, I highly recommend. 

Thanks to Joe and some other British guy who has a similar model as me (and I guess, also thanks to the original manual the juke came with), I kept on with my troubleshooting. I learned how to check and test electrical connectors. I noticed that the four springs (ones that work like a car’s shocks) had jostled loose in the move, causing it to lean slightly to one side; setting it level didn’t make it magically work on it’s own but it didn’t hurt. I manually started moving things around to trick the machine into action until I could figure out why the inputs of selecting weren’t translating to the contacts. I continued to run on "scan" mode and lubricate to clean all the old gunk. I realized at some point that the reason keys and displays weren’t lit up wasn’t because of electrical shorts or damaged components, but simply because the two fluorescent bulbs that illuminated everything from the inside needed to be replaced. I replaced the lights, which I also had to search on YouTube to learn how to do. I cleaned the damn thing inside out until the chrome sparkled and the faux-wood paneling shimmered. 

(image tag: picture of me in the belly of the beast: tinkering with circuits inside a disassembled, electrified jukebox )

But I suppose the real reason I’m writing this is to say that I did, in fact, finally get the jukebox mostly up and running. That first time the arm grabbed a 45 from the basket and the needle landed on Hank Williams, Sr. (of all the records for an inaugural track; I might have selected differently had I known it was going to finally work that time), I squealed with joy to hear it thumping from the speakers. I tried again; this time I selected BeeGee's "Lonely Days"--that one was for me. The Gibb brothers sounded incredible. I went through the few other records I had pre-loaded: an old Beatles record I had hanging in bedrooms through my youth (colored vinyl and fine print that read "for jukebox use only"--when I say this was a life dream, reader, I do mean this was a life dream); The Commodores; Rod Stewart; Aretha; Dolly. I can’t think of a time I’ve been more pleased, especially given how often I give up on a project mid-way through. There’s still a couple fixes I need to figure out, but it's close enough for me. 

After all the troubleshooting came the fun part of building out the jukebox with my collection of 45s, so that each row had a theme or flow, a total of 80 slots. I could still use a few improvements to fill some gaps i definitely have on LP / CD / mp3 that would be magic to hear booming from a juke. And I still need to print custom labels in lieu of a spreadsheet. For inaugural use, I decided to stick firmly in 1950s-1970s records, with a few exceptions as wildcards, slotted anonymously as “?? mystery records ??." One of those may or may not be "Chattahoochee," I guess you'll just have to make your selection and see what happens.

<3,
rhienna

(image tag: Rock-Ola 470 flyer)