Beware the electro-mechanicals

Imagine a DIY job you’ve never tackled before. Most of us would botch it, saying we’d do better next time. But some get it right from scratch – always! A very special talent.

My friend Richard figured in earlier posts and had that talent. So has Graham whom I interviewed this weekend for the local website. It was Graham’s second time under the website’s scrutiny: first for his remarkable skills as a taxidermist, now as a juke box restorer. During the day he services domestic appliances.

RAF national service taught me to distrust electro-mechanicals; in any electrical system they tend to be the weak spot and are often fiendish to repair. Juke boxes, especially those made during the Silver Period prior to 1965, are almost wholly electro-mechanical. Not only the arms that pick out the 78 or 45 rpm records but even the systems that convey the choice of record provided by the push-button.

Graham faced such a moment when renovating a 1957 AMI Model H. In brief when he chose Elvis the ‘box played Bill Haley. These days a quick twiddle with the electronics would sort things. But this AMI had been repaired with parts cannibalised from elsewhere and a spinning disc which selected the correct solenoid from a circle of sixty consistently betrayed the punter. Needless to say Graham worked it out. I’d like to say it would have taken me much longer but I’d never have dared take the back off the thing in the first place.