Need Help w/ Rock-ola Supersound 490

Hi Everyone,

Been reading older posts on the forum for some time now trying to fix my Jukebox. I am electronics savy but not super-savy. The only peron I can find to fix it charges $80 an hour with travel time and lives about an hour and a half from me. Anything you guys can do to help would be appreciated. Wife is telling me to fix the box or get rid of it, we have to get it fixed! Thanks for your help.

Had the box since '97, worked great up until a few years ago when the magazine motor stopped working. Runs super slow and the power supply makes a loud clicking sound. Took the magazine motor apart and "cleaned" it. I think. Re-greased. Then on this forum I think, thought it might be a bad power regulator. Have tried two now, one exactly like the one that's in there now and I got NOTHING. Some power but none on the selector board with the new regulators. Could those have been bad? Because at least with the old one I got the slow spinning and the clicking.

So that's where I am now. Just installed the new regulator and got nothing. At my wts end and needing your help. Thanks.

Richard Madden
Baldwinsville NY (near Syracuse)

Here is a picture of the box and the regulator.

That's exactly one of the symptoms my rowe r-86 was having. It ended up being the power connector that goes to the mech and carousel/magazine unit needing cleaned several times.





Of course, I'm not saying that it's the same problem as yours, just same symptom. It may, however, give you a possible starting point.

Good as any place to re-start the process. Thanks. Will give it a try. BTW - How did you clean the connectors?

I find the only good way to make sure that the connection is good is remove each male and femail connection and clean it using a fibre glass pencil and then put more tension on the connector by making the femail connection tighter.
In order to do this you will have to remove the connections from the plastic molex plug and socket, I suggest that you do this one at a time.

Regards
Alan

Alan Hood
ami-man
UK

Well, I got up this morning, and I was getting the same problems. I couldn't figure out how to get the female molex connectors out, but I did manage to clean the males with a fiberglass pen and then used a small tuning screwdriver set to get inside of the female connectors and scrape them, spray some electronics cleaner in them, and then used a small flat head tuning screwdriver to go behind the metal bend one side of the female connections tighter, to create a smaller hole, and when I connected it back up, the connections were tight and worked well.

If you bend it back too far, you may either block the whole connector from locking into place or possibly break the female connector itself. You basically want the hole large enough so that the tip of the male connector can push and bend the female connector back in place, and it'll probably scrape off some of the years' of debris caked on the male connector, providing a better connection while doing so.

I think if this were your problem area, you'd see or hear something happening by just tugging the connection several directions. Either more or less clicking or some sporadic behavior with your mech, gripper arm, sounds (possibly buzzing/humming) coming from the amp/speakers, or turntable motor would be a sign of something wrong in your immediate area.

Hi All,
That is an A-MP brand, not Molex brand connector. Both A-MP ( Now Tyco A-MP) and Molex supply dedicated removal tools for their products. One trick I use, on both halves of that type connector, is a "pipe cleaner" saturated with Deoxit, and of course you must "reform" the female section as described--Ron Rich