seeburg L100 selctions missing!

Hello Laurence,

I am trying to think back to when I did work on some Seeburgs. I seemed to think that the pins should be slightly rounded not flat, I am not sure that fileing is a good idea but they need to be very clean due to the low voltage on the tormat. When we used to clean the tormats we used a pencil rubber (erraser) and clean the end of the pin with a burnisher.

Regards
Alan

Alan Hood
ami-man
UK

Alan, and all,
Filing the pins "flat" works fine, as they will quickly become rounded enough, to operate as desired. I would suggest that nothing stronger than a pencil erasure be used on the revits of the TMU. They were gold-flashed, and anything stronger will remove gold. A safety solvent is OK to use to "wash" them--but use caution here that you spray it onto a rag, and wipe--do not spray the records! Ron Rich

Laurence, A couple more thoughts.

So, the machine seems to trips too soon when going for a B side thus traveling right to left.

The pulse is supposed to hit with the plunger squarely on the rivet, the reason for the offset on these faster mechs was to allow for inertia.

The fact that it is tripping too soon would seem to rule out things like a dashpot. Does the machine seem at all sluggish, is it easy to stop the motor by placing a finger on the turntable. that might indicate a bad motor cap causing a lack of speed. This would normally affect both side though.

It is fairly normal for some wobble to occur in the clutch shaft that the starwheel turns on. This does cause one direction's pulses to be ever-so-slightly longer/shorter than the other. The only time this becomes a problem is when wear or mis-adjustment of the detent switch makes pulses so short that they become marginal in these cases.

As an oddball chance, is the R-O pulse being delivered to the right plunger given the direction of the mech? that is rear plunger going left-to-right for A sides. Slip a card between the plungers and the Tormat and check that the read out voltage is -only- being applied to the correct plunger when up flip the reversing switch.

Measure from plunger to deck or chassis ground.

Lastly, Write in a B side but use the service switch to stop the mech but put the switch back in the "normal" position. Manually bring the mech (by turning the motor shaft) to the selected slot and see if the pulse is actually on the right rivet. You'll need to go very slowly as the mech approaches the rivet and/or have an assistant watch for you.

Sorry for this buckshot approach, this one has me stumped. it's one of the drawbacks to this sort of remote troubleshooting. With the machine in front of me it would probably take 5-10 minutes max. to figure it out.

The tormat plungers and most settings here are quite forgiving and frankly, I've never filed any plungers. They are all probably scooped from wear in service and this just isn't a problem. i do chemically clean the tormat and plungers once a year and check plunger over travel and detent switch timing.


Re: AMI Man, from my measurements the Seeburg read out voltage has a front of around 340VDC but falls to near-zero and around 35ma in steady-state. this often leads to confusion. They designed it to use a voltage and pulse front far above what was needed to compensate for dirt, wear or slight mistiming.

Rob/NYC