Sights and Sounds - Wurlitzer "Statesman" 3400 Jukebox
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- In this Sights and Sounds video, we're going on a deep dive into the mechanisms and operation of the Wurlitzer 3400 series jukebox, also known as the Statesman.
Here's a link to the original video:
• The Computer-free Auto...
Other Sights and Sounds videos:
• Sights and Sounds
A note on captions:
Generally, I don't add manual captioning to videos on this channel. However, the first two videos in this series have proper captions - when I started it I asked folks if they would appreciate them, and they said yes. However, making captions for these videos is... quite tedious and honestly the thought of doing them is part of why it has taken so long for me to make this one. Describing mechanical sounds in text and timing them correctly is a fiddly process, and I (mostly) don't script these so it's _very_ manual.
Since this series is designed primarily as an audio experience, I've decided that I would rather the videos exist first and I'll handle captions later. I hope that's not too disappointing to those who rely on captions. Going forward, I'll be keeping track of which Sights and Sounds videos are uncaptioned and when time allows I'll tinker with 'em. For now, auto captions are there for my speech - and for this particular video, that's a lot of it!
Would it not be possible for the community to add captions?
That feature was killed, unfortunately.
@@theAstarrr In theory, yes, but it takes more coordination than I have faith in myself to not screw up badly.
@@kempo_95 Sadly youtube removed the option to allow that to be done easily on youtube. Now one would have to send a subtitle file to the creator manually.
@@TechnologyConnextras An alternative to the axed community captions is the UA-cam Subtitle Editor feature, if you haven't already tried it. No link here as UA-cam doesn't like them in the comments, but just search for it and you'll find a support article called "Add or get Subtitle Editor access in UA-cam Studio".
Hat tip to you for explaining and audio-describing content for your subscribers who are unsighted or low vision. 💚 Thank you for being such a great community contributor and helping people from all walks of life to feel included. 👍
Oh brian's here
love to see you here good taste
Hello, Count Ollam!
@@cbihun ahoy! 👋😁
I concur!
As someone who is actively going blind I really appreciate these descriptive audio videos. Thanks so much!
Best of luck to you!
My god, the amount of work and dedication you put into these.. Bravo, Sir, the world's a better place thanks to people like you!
Hey thank you so much for being verbally descriptive. I myself am legally blind and wished more content creators did this, especially for very visual content. Keep it up! :) :)
Holy crap, what a Rube Goldberg contraption. Amazing jukeboxes worked as reliably as they did.
The aesthetic of the Statesman reminds me very much of cigarette vending machines of the same era. It makes me wonder if Wurlitzer was trying for some sort of commonality of design to make the places that usually had both things in those days look more uniform or something. Like, I could easily see one of these and a cig machine standing next to each other in a late-'70s Elks Club, between the bar and the pool table. :)
Hi Alec! Thank you for this very well described content! It was almost as good as me being there and touching the actual components, which considering that they were energized and moving, the description might actually be a better ideea! :) Greetings from a blind guy from Romania!
Haha, it's good to have alternatives to direct touching sometimes, I guess. ;)
As a currently-sighted person, I too appreciate that you're making this exist, Alec. Who knows if/when I might lose vision, and even while I have it, it's interesting to think about descriptions -- also inspiring as something for me to do if/when I get to creating content again. Thank you!
Never stop doing what you do. Your the best at explaining everyday devices, from the simplicity of a coffee maker to the complexity of a mechinal juke box. I don't think I've ever missed any of your videos.
The engineers that devised the complicated mechanism must have been geniuses! And the techs that repaired them must also have been exceedingly clever and well trained.
Generations ago when they still taught actual skills in school unlike today.
It was indeed very entertaining. The more comprehensive of an explanation I get the more I appreciate it. Gives me something better to focus on rather than how my life is in shambles and my mental health is slowly deteriorating, heh. Such efforts may not be as thoroughly appreciated by as many, but there are definitely those who do.
Peace.
I think that's such a great present you're giving blind people or partially blind. Making sure that your videos are (usually) subtitled and that all units are said in both imperial and metric system is already great for accessibility, but we hit a whole new level with your "Sights and Sounds" series.
You're a good person, Alec. Keep up the good work 👍
"95% of me talking" - YES PLEASE that's totally fine, I mean
I can't imagine the amount of labor that would go into making a machine like that. The wiring itself is totally amazing.
That was an epic video, bravo. The Jukebox has always been a magical mechanical marvel to me. If any of the timings are off it could ruin your records or simply self destruct. Every bit of that was a joy to watch.
I'd love to see a long form video on a Seeburg jukebox (without having to make one myself -- hey, do you want a Seeburg FC2?) From 1970 they had core memory and digital controls strapped to a 1940s era vertical-play mechanism. And an inverter to run 33 or 45rpm. Pretty wild.
Wurlitzer organs are insane
I'd love to see you covering them at some point.
I really appreciate this deep dive into the operation of the "Statesman".
One of the things that I kind of got from the original videos, but it's more apparent in this one, is that the readout function feels structurally similar to the electro-mechanical outlet timers that were fairly common years back. The motor advances the ring representing all 24 hours in the day (not sure if the motor has some kind of voltage control to run at a particular speed and has the proper gear reduction or if it's working like a clock radio and using the hertz rate to run the motor at a particular speed/interval) and the tabs that you pull out will mechanically run into some teeth on a rotary switch in order to flip it on or off (as opposed to the selection mechanism which uses electrical connections with metal pins).
I think those timers use simple geared induction motors, so they're matched to the line frequency (60Hz/50Hz). Induction motors are very simple and very reliable provided the line frequency is stable.
I'm curious what you consider to be "cheap", I used to repair these things in the early to mid 2000's and none of them I would really consider "cheap". Though I guess of all the models I worked on, the Statesman would be one of the less expensive models. One of my favorite models, made by Seaburg, was pretty interesting; it used ferrite core memory to store user selections. The circuitry that made that work was sometimes a real pain to get working just right after 50 yrs though.
You did a great job with this. I've always been fascinated by things electro-mechanical. One thing I think you forgot, or I missed, is what year this jukebox is. Based on the styling and plastics, I'm thinking about 1975.
I really love this kind of content, I hope you continue this series. This machine in particular is fascinating to me. I love how wildly complex it is to do something mechanically that we do these days with a teensy bit of circuit board and code. Your series on this machine is one of my favorite videos of yours, so i'm really happy we get to see all the inner workings in such detail. Great work!
I love these episodes just because it is somebody taking the time to document the sites and sounds of delinquent hardware that's kind of lost to the world. The last one listening to the CD DVD changer. Just hearing the sounds was magical to me
I have a 3 disc VCD player.I sometimes get it out of the closet and plug it in just for listening to its CD changer mechanism😀
Very interesting! Thanks for making this video with all the steps this thing goes through! WOW! I wonder how many Wurlitzer engineers went nuts designing this?!?!
Wurlitzer is pronounced VURlitzer (W in German is pronounced as a V). Thanks!
Well done on your ability to explain how this mechanism works. As an old guy who used to work on Strowger telephone equipment, I found this very interesting, and in certain aspects quite similar. Great work
I remember these kind of jukeboxes from the 80s and early 90s. They are the same design as those both mounted ones they used to have at restaurants. 5 plays for a quarter!
Tarzan Boy by Baltimora. Good choice!
Good choice for an opening song; Leo, Donnie, Mikey & Raph would be proud.
My taste must suck, b/c it doesn't seem all that ugly. I think this must be the jukebox at the VFW hall where my cousin had his wedding reception in the early '60s. First time young me got to see happy drunks in the wild. Mom did not approve. But I was impressed by the jukebox.
Being that I like to listen to UA-cam at work, these audio-based videos are excellent for my use case. I don't want to have to switch windows to view video all the time, it might look like I'm not working! But of course I'm working at 100% capacity! ;)
Omg, I recognize the sound of the disc carousel turning and selecting as very similar to that of a sample used in Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine". I never knew what that sound was in the song, but jukebox like this must be it.
Thank you for considering the visually impaired (such as myself ) I can still see the phones screen but I know many people who have no vision at all you are a good person
When I was a kid I loved watching the visible mechanism of an old Rockola 45 RPM machine in a bar at the American Legion while my Dad had a few beers (ahh the 70s)
I can smell the odor of stale beer and nicotine through the video.
i’m blind and I just listened to like the first 30 or 40 seconds of this video and I heard that you were going to be describing things. I really appreciate that. 💯
One of the reasons I watch your videos is because you are usually very thorough and informative and your presence adds to the experience of "a video". If I was interested in just your voice, I would have listened to a podcast. I enjoyed this video, but honestly I prefer your presence. Super extreme something something duper phenomenally really awesome description of the mechanics and appearance of this less than desirable juke.
Well, I wasn't expecting to hear "Tarzan Boy" today!
I can't be the only one who was expecting "The Girl From Ipanema" or something.
As someone who can have endless problems with the simplest mechanical devices, I can't imagine anyone designing something so complex that works so well. I suppose today all this could be done electronically using digital music files.
The fact that it still works is still amazing. Good luck finding an Apple product that is 5 years old that still works is just about impossible.
Loved it! I grew up in the electrical-mechanical age, and remember my dad (USAF) rebuilding teletype machines in the garage and coupling them to his HAM radio gear.
Length of vid a little much, I'll watch the 2nd half tonight.
So much for no effort November 😂😂
This is a delightful video though. Brilliant stuff and more please :)
This is a lovely dance of switches, motors and actuators. Astonishing thinking how simple it is today to implement the same functionality.
Is there any sort of lockout protection for carousel positions that don't have a record in them? I guess you would need to prevent the selection accumulator from setting the pin for slots without a record.
Lots of things would go wrong if the tone arm was dropped onto a turntable without a record on it.
While this is meant to be a listenable video, I'm fascinated by the sights part of the video. Seeing all the mechanical interactions is pretty cool. I'll probably end up watching the other Sights and Sounds videos after this one.
Great video. I have a rowe/ami r91 box. Holds 100 records. It is an absolute blast for parties, and will crank tunes incredibly loud. Mikes arcade has a wonderful title strip generator for making new ones if your records didn't come with any, or are missing. I'm in the middle currently of cleaning a full reload of mine. The same records have been in for 8 something years at this point and it's time for a change. Hoping this weekend I'll have everything cleaned and swapped. I set mine to free play, the bill collector is wonky so it runs continuously, so I unplugged it.
It would be interesting to challenge some modern day engineering students to duplicate this kind of functionality using only components and machine tools that were available when that was made.
16:08 the reason the solenoid is vertical is that the "L" bracket arm lengths are different and thus amplify the motion of the linkage by a factor of 2 since the long arm of the "L" is about 2x as long as the short arm. Short core motion, long arm action.
I like how they've labelled everything inside the machine.
Tarzan Boy good choice of song even if that Jukebox is horribly scratchy and poor sounding
I love these old electromechanical mechanisms, there is a lost art in designing these I think.
So it plays in the order of the selection accumulator, not the order of selection?
5:51 - that 'mountain scene' looks out of 'Marlboro Country"! :) This thing looks like a cigarette vending machine!
Welcome to flavor country!🤠🚬
@@marsoelflaco5722 This jukebox *totally* belongs in a dimly-lit carpeted lounge!
dont have time today but i always love these. adding to my watch later list
That Tarzan Boy rendition was truly an experience!
Brown? What brown? I can only see dark orange on my screen.
It's awesome you're doing some audio description content
2:16 Italo Disco classic "Tarzan Boy", by Baltimora. lol
🐵
Thank you for taking on this monumental task. As a friend of mine is so fond of saying when describing technologies from the 'days of yore'... "It seemed nothing was too much work". As the 'electronic-side' of things wasn't quite there yet to make this work much more simply - the genius of mechanical engineering would just have to 'make do' until technology was ready. (Although by this point in time - it really was. Read ahead). NOW - it would be swell if you could provide the same in-depth look at the 'way-ahead of its time' Seeburg Tormat memory system, dating back to 1955...
It's Tarzan Boy by Baltimora.
🐵
Well. This was fantastic!
2:20 very short version of Baltimora's Tarzan Boy, right?
Yep. It was probably shortened in editing to avoid copyright strikes.
I know this is a year old video, but I just got a Wurlitzer 3500 zodiac and was wondering if you’ve got a public contact or know a shop or expert that would help me in diagnosing any issues, or point me in the right direction for parts.
Thank you very much for this video! My brother just inherited one of these beauties (ugh!). There are 2 problems with it. The side 1 solenoid does not energize. The discs always play on side B, and in a continuous loop. If I manually activate the solenoid, side A will play and the carousel will return to home position, or look for the next record. My guess here is a relay issue, but I really don’t know. The other problem is the carousel will just randomly stop. I would have to nudge it along until it arrives to its destination. I am thinking dirty contacts or a weak motor. Do you have any thoughts? Thank you again for this video, it helped me understand this jukebox tremendously.
The sights 😔 and sounds of those are just phenomenal. Too bad we can’t get the smells. I was born next door 🚪 to the hippie generation, my birth year being 1970. What could be better? I’d restore this, putting in the mountains 🏔. I’d also light 💡 them up with a fluorescent bulb 💡, which goes behind the glass panel. That’s if this is a vacuum tube type jukebox. I also like 👍 “Statesman”, lit 🔥 up in purple. That’s one ☝️ well built unit, at 372 pounds. I remember the days of jukeboxes, one ☝️ being in our favorite restaurant. I think 🤔 it was a Seeburg Select-O-Matic. I think 🤔 jukeboxes were built in the USA 🇺🇸. By proud 🥹 American 🇺🇸 workers. Does this play 45’s, or 78’s? This thing is a beautiful 😻 work of art 🖼.
Good job explaining this Very complex electromechanical device. 👍👍👍👍👍👍 It is so much like my pinball machine.
If this jukebox had the side loader changer it would have been an Americana 3. The side by side was the Statesman.. This is the only difference between the 3300 and the 3400,. The Wurlimatic mechanism originally designed for the flat top models. It was also used in the Zodiac line and some of the nostalgia models. The changer is also known as the West German and is still used in a modified form. The only difference is the selection is done digitally now.
Before the Susan B Anthony dollar, dollar coins were 1.5" (38.1 mm) across; huge and unwieldy, bigger even than the already bafflingly large half dollar. At the time of this machine's production, dollar coins hadn't been minted since 1935; they'd start minting more, the Eisenhower Dollar, in 1971, but those weren't terribly popular either for the same reason. This size of coin was rarely accepted by vending machines even when the coin was in "common" circulation.
Hi.
Wow! What an absolutely fantastic job! How you can put things so simple for that is amazing!
I bet that wasn't easy!
Can I ask though, those feelers you mention are they rings?
Keep this series up!
From totally blind Gary Price in the United Kingdom.
I guess the accumulator mechanism can't cope with two people paying for the same record, having it play only once. I've noticed that behaviour on more modern computery jute boxes but expect in that case it was by design. The modern (I'm talking 1990s) one also had a naughty habit of putting off your play for as long as possible, presumably to make sure you stayed longer and drank more beer. How would this one treat sequential ordering, the next one on the wheel?
Tarzan Boy by Baltimora- one of my 80s faves!!! 😁
🐵
Yikes, to think what creativity was required to make any kind of automatic features possible just a few decades ago, and now we just write a few lines of code to make a queue for some audio files to play through loudspeakers. I respect what older inventers and engineers had to do, and I'm so glad I don't need to deal with such intricate contraptions
It's unbelievable how much you could simplify this with electronics. .
A PLC, some stepper motors and 300 less pounds.
For the gas burner, if the flame had been set lower, would that have decreased the amount of energy lost (heat not being used to heat the pot)? You may be familiar with kerosene lanterns/lamps.. with the flame fuelled by the wick, the level of brightness can be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the amount of wick that is exposed to air, in turn affecting the size of the flame... However, eventually raising the wick further wastes fuel as the flame can only efficiently convert heat to light by a certain amount, meaning that raising the wick will use more kerosene but a lot of it will not burn cleanly and will cause a lot of soot... blackening the glass thus dramatically decreasing the visible light that can be enjoyed... Would the gas burner be the same? The flame of natural gas or propane each burn at a determined temperature, so I believe increasing or decreasing the volume of gas that is being burned won't necessarily change how hot the burner will get but rather how much area receives that heat... I think that theoretically then, there would be a "magic" flame size/volume burning that would allow maximum heat transfer, being absorbed by the surface of the bottom of the pot rather than the heat billowing around and past the pot...
yay? Nay?
Another question, venting dirty CO saturated air is a good thing... back on the farm I cooked with Coleman fuel burners, as well as propane burners/range, and depending on the BTUs being burned, it was important to adjust the amount of fresh air that could enter the space. Generally in the Shasta camper trailer, using the propane oven, one of the shuttered windows would ideally be opened about half an inch (based on the size of the opening of the window), and if I was heating the space (in Canada its cold 10/12 months), the window would need to be opened an inch, as I would use a Coleman heater dome (those are fun but scary and safe yet dangerous).. as that heater burned a lot to BTUs (24,000 I believe) so you needed adequate air exchange... so I wonder, even if the range hood was venting out properly, fresh air still needs to enter the space by some method for the air exchange to be properly balanced... IS your home too air-tight? Would a window being open slightly in the kitchen decreased the amount of poisoned air reaching the living room where the monitor is situated?
Speaking of how hot it can get cooking with gas stove in summer... imagine a wood cooking stove when its summertime, even in Canada.. luffly! Anyways those were my thoughts.. im not brightest flame (hahah!) but .. umm... yeah. :p
Brilliantly explained..... I wasn't interested in these things but 5 mins in I got hooked through your explanation....
I actually remember this particular model of jukebox! It wasn’t the clouds that moved, but the water. And, with a lot of these, there actually was a little space - usually where it would have a mechanism to show the selection playing - that you could look through and see the jukebox in action. I do have one question: where’d you find the original “Hey Joe” (before it was released as “Hey Joe Hey Moe” in the 70’s-80’s)?
I noticed that the "TOTAL RECORD COUNTER| is not working ( 74,388 total plays)
What I think is pretty impressive, is that someone at Wurlitzer actually understood & could visualize exactly what was happening inside the jukebox. Probably drew it all out by hand too.
While i understand that its just the noise of a old decently sized ac motor. The damn jukebox having a 60hz hum while in opperation makes it sound like 220kv transformer when alive damn thing sounds like it will kill you if you touch it while its active 😂
The wiring on the "circuit boards" are circuit boards and components are unnecessary to be a circuit board. The feelers making contact, are properly called "wipers." If only two possible connections are possible as in a relay the movable contact is properly called a "swinger." Ron W4BIN
So what happens if Person A puts in coins and select A1, B1 and C1. Then person B comes and also selects B1 while A1 is still playing, because they won't know that B1 was selected before. The select accumulator will try to pull the pin again, but has no way of detecting it is already pulled. Will it still take the credits and not play B1 after C1?
This seems like an awful lot of effort for No Effort November. #JustSaying
My favorite local dive bar had one of these until maybe ten years ago and I always wondered what made it tick (because the mechanism was hidden). Much appreciated!
I remember a lot of these located at various Waffle Houses throughout the 90s.
Given the placement of the gorgeous purple signage in the back, I wonder how well it fit the standard window height of Waffle House and if the 'ugly' interior was just a way to keep people from standing around it too long
this is truly just an unintentional ASMR gift
Awesome video thanks for making this for us novices. I do have 3 questions. 1st you said that you had it set to free play in the credit box. How is that done? Next I see a number of springs that are either missing and what appears to be broken and hanging on the accumulator. Is that why certain records are not in the record carousel? What is the purpose of the light bulb that comes on for a second or so and then goes back off that's under carousel?
I don't get how you Americans can give you'r elected officials this much power and never question how elections are performed, in the EU we have to to use current legemitation to even vote. Why is it so hard in the USA to do the same?.....
16:08 - I am an expert by no means whatsoever, but looking at the movement here, I believe the reason the solenoid is located on the end of the L-shaped arm, instead of being directly attached, might be to increase the length of travel in this part of the mechanism. The longer upper part of the L-shaped arm will have more travel at its end than that of the shorter part attached to the solenoid… because physics.
I absolutely love your videos on either channel and always look forward to them more than any others on UA-cam, keep up the Amazon and fascinating work, Alec!
Long but great description. The only way I could imagine it being better would have been to somehow collaborate with Tim Hunkin on the explanation.
This is what I subscribed for and I am not at all remotely interested in the figaro, or any of the electric car videos. Just thought I would share.
You've gotta hand it to them, this may be a tacky low-end model but they still bothered to put labels on everything and don't bury them in a flimsy user's manual. The inside of this machine does accessibility better than YT's designers.
You Might want task Jim Lindeanas. He may be able to give you maybe an idea of the issue or maybe, you could find a way to have him take a look at That Jukebox, Solenoid issue!
www.youtube.com/@JimsRadioShop
I agree with all the comments I have read. It’s a joy to have the opportunity to change a now gone childhood infatuation into an adult appreciation of mechanical engineering. Awesome job - thanks for taking it on!
I enjoy the sights and sounds series, but also be aware that these juke boxes did not buzz anywhere near as much as this one does now when they were new. As they have aged the coils in motors and transformers have become "buzzy" due to laminations deteriorating.
That said, they were never made to be silent in operation either.
The qay the jokebox looks is subjective. This is defintely not the ugliest one I have ever seen :)
The L bracket on the solenoid is increasing the travel that the solenoid supplies by the ratio of the lengths of the 2 arms of the lever. The required travel is defined by the switches being operated. To actuate the " trident" linkage directly would need a solenoid with a longer stroke? no idea why that would be a problem , don't know anything about what specs of standard solenoids might have been back then.
When did Wurlitzer make the water bubbler jukeboxes? I've seen a few of them, they're the typical arch shape with water tubes running up the edges and pumps that pump the water, some of them also have rotating colour filters that rotate around what I presume are fluorescent light tubes. I've seen a few that play records and one that played CDs. In those units I've seen, the record/CD holder and the player are both visible from the outside, and they both had computerised electronic selection controls with digital readouts.
For the young kids, motor driven cams, were common on old washing machines and dryers, and rotated slowly for the whole wash cycle. Its been replaced by microcontrollers, since the late 1980s.
Cancel solenoid not needed on certain models of Seeburg Jukeboxes, as they actually used memory cores, as the accumulator. Two cores per record (side A & B). Beauty of core memory, is that read operation also erases the core, as a needed part of the read operation, so no separate "cancel" operation needed.
I think I almost want to try to make one of these one day. Probably not really, but almost. :) Anyway, definitely super cool to see it all. Thanks again!
The name of the model "Statesman" is probably the giveaway to why this jukebox looks the way it looks. So that it could be placed in bars, clubs, lounges etc that were more understated where it wouldn't stand out.
Hey the way the machine stutters after record play then moves you may get away with bending the actuator arm to that micro switch a tad outward so when the tone arm hits it it makes it travel a tad sooner and depresses the switch contact a bit more. I have a very similar model of this jukebox that will make the selection and start the arm but does not pop up the spring loaded fingers. I am hoping it is the brush contacts on the rotor plate. With watching your detailed video on how system works and having the electrical diagrams and working in the electrical field mainly with industrial controls I hope to get figured out. Thanks as always for sharing the video with us all as always enjoyed.
Anyone else think the first record sounded like “Never Gonna Give You Up” when it first started to play?
How does this mechanical system keep track of the double checks for A1? You describe how it hits it twice, but how does it "know" it has done so?
Electro-mechanical machines are always mesmerising to watch while in operation... such a complex orchestration of levers and brackets and gears...