Rowe R87 Keypad numbers 6-0 not working?

New guy here, what a great site!

My wife just bought a juke box that happens to be a Rowe R87. She's been wanting one for quite some time, just for the fun of it. She has a decent 45 collection, as do I.

I do have the field service manual.

The only problem so far is the 6,7,8,9 and 0 buttons on the keypad do not work. The machine was moved about two miles from purchase place to my house with pick-up truck and rope, and the keypad worked prior to the move.

I have read here and on other websites about the problem we're having and what some of the solutions might be. I have checked many of the connections for cold solder joints (didn't find any) and have checked the CCC battery. I tell you what, this machine is very clean. I did not check the voltage of the battery, but is appears to not be leaking. All the plastic wire connections are tight and look good. I found one solder joint on the pricing board that was open looking (very little solder) so I hit that one (at a diode). This is the first jukebox I've ever looked inside of, and it's pretty cool!

I dabble in electronics and am good with a soldering iron, so I'm not afraid to dive in.

Any suggestions are appreciated and thanks in advance for taking your time to try and help me.

Rick in Toledo, OH

Rick,
Rowe's are famous for this type problem, and 99.99999% of the time, it's in the "darn" plugs !
I would advise you to re-solder ALL "headers" in the CCC, keyboard, pricing board, and power supply ( if used --don't recall?). If you see any brown colored "pins" they will need to be replaced, if the "round" type, or cleaned, if the "square" type. The corresponding pin inside the plastic holder, will also need to be removed, and in most cases, replaced. Have fun !
Ron Rich

Ron is correct... resolder all the pins.... every last one. (pricing board is the worst for bad joints)

Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for the replies. I will start with your reccomendations to do some serious resoldering of the pins and to check the modular pin connectors for corrosion, etc.

Last night a new problem developed though. When a record is selected, the record retrieves, the tone arm advances to the correct location, then the tone arm returns and the record is picked up and gets returned, without being played.

We have the service manual and the troubleshooting guide (which is very vague). There is a light that stays on; I believe it's the 'toggle' led on the board located just under the player mechanism. Is this the power supply? It's the module with all the led's and it's housed in black plastic like the CCC. I'm at work so I'm going by memory on this. I understand there is another power supply located in the left compartment with the amp and preamp.

Tonight I will start the cleaning/resoldering of the pins. I guess the overall cleanliness and appearance doesn't mean much regarding the continuity of the pin contacts. Like I stated in the original post, this machine appears to be very clean and well taken care of. It's pretty easy to spot a cold solder joint, in my experiance, and the pin connections I checked the other day really looked fine.

I'm just hoping this machine doesn't start to flake out every time I turn around! They can be very tempermental, so I'm finding out.

Thanks again and any other advise is more than welcome.

Rick in Toledo, OH

Rick,
The cause of the record returning can be a couple of things--
Lack of proper oil in the gripper motor will cause the clutch to stay engaged, thus causing "over-run" of the motor, into the transfer phase. Oil both motor reservoirs, with 20wt ND oil and put ONE drop on each end of the armature shaft.
The switch activated by the cam of that motor also could fail--see service manual. Rare, but the unit you are speaking of is the "Mechanism Controller" and it can also cause this. Any one of the "reject" switches, if closed, can also cause it--check the schematic-- Ron Rich

Hi Rick,

The keypad fault will be more than likely down to to dry joints (cold joints USA) on the pricing board or CCC.

You say you can solder, if you can correctly I would start on checking the connection pins on the power supply PCB first (it is usually the connections from the transformer to the board that is the issue) then check out the CCC, Mechanism Control Unit and then the Pricing Board (top and bottom connection).
If you resolder the connection pins do that, but do not start going over component connections on the board, if we have to do a repair on a board that has had this done it costs the customer a fortune to put it right.

There are a number of jukebox engineers on and off of this forum that you can send your boards for testing/repair in the USA and myself in Europe.

Regards
Alan

Alan Hood
ami-man
UK

Well it's been almost a month and we finally got the Rowe R-87 working properly.

After replacing the pricing board, which was found to be defective, the unit still didn't work. So I sent Bruce Wentworh in New Hampshire, the CCC, selection PC Board and all the wiring harnesses for testing. Turns out it was just a bad cable! This I should have suspected all along, but you know what is said about hindsite!

So many thanks go out to Bruce Wentworth. Anyone reading this, be assured he provides a high quality service.

Our next step is to consider replacing the two 6 inch mid-treble speakers. Even with the EQ switches max on treble and min on bass, this thing is very boomy sounding. Not sure how much latitude the amp, etc. will allow regarding full range sound. To me, the speakers are 30+ years old. But they are not falling apart...yet.

IIRC, the speakers are rated at 30 ohms (I have to check, this could be the Woofers) so what the heck? 30 ohms? I'd like to put in some Co-Axials and hear how they sound, but not sure about finding them rated at 30 Ohms.

If anyone out there has any advice regarding getting the best sound out of this machine, let me know! Now that it's working, it would be fun to try and get it sounding as good as possible. It could be an "It is what it is" situation, and that's ok too. It's not like it sounds that bad, just not very "HI-FI at all!

Thanks to all the previous posts for helping me out!

Rick in Toledo, OH

Do you have the speaker terminals like the book says? E-1 ground, E-6 highest tap on the transformer pack. Make sure your mech is on the springs, not bolted down. ROWE is the boomest.... you could test the mid drivers, but they should be an exact replacement, or have them repaired. Check the crossover network for dryed-up caps.

Hi Rick,

The sound on that R-87 should sound great assumming that the amplifier is infact a Rowe Ami amplifier and that it is the correct one for the jukebox and wired up correctly.
The volume control needs to be 10k log, for max volume the violet and pink output cables need to be on E6 left and right as already stated and the black on E1 usually on the right on the output package.

If you let us know how you have the cartridge wired and the amplifier details we should be able to point you in the right direction.

Regards
Alan

Alan Hood
ami-man
UK