Hey all!
Haven’t been on in a while, it’s been busy at my house.
I’ve since picked up a fixed a few pins.
The game changer happened when I inherited a non-functioning 70s Wurlitzer Juke. Talk about a whole new level of complexity! I brought it back to life and absolutely loved every minute working on it. I was able to figure the whole thing out without a service manual. (i did end up getting one so I could get part #s).
All that said, I was looking around the net for more projects and found a whole bunch of wanted ads looking for a juke repair man. Well holy jeeze, a lightbulb went off in my head- I could start a small side business! Hell, I know these Wurlitzer jukes like the back of my hand. I reached out to and got replies from the 3 enthusiastic posters. Well, 1 of the three thought I’d come over to their house and fix it for free LOL. The other 2 got upset when I gave a price point of 40.00 per hour. Is that not fair? The average I saw was like 78.00 per hour, and that’s u-haul to the shop! It’s no wonder these old jukes end up rotting away in sheds.
This is probably the most common and oldest story in the world, but my ambition to start a little side business is pretty much null and void.
Anyway, cheers all!!

Spot on! Very awesome pointers you’re making. My “day job” is in HVAC control systems. so the concept of eliminating callbacks is definitely not lost on me when I sent my price over, I also said that the only right way to fix it is to disassemble the components entirely, clean, lube, and reinstall. I told them that the cleaning part is incredibly time consuming since they likely haven’t been touched since the mid 80s at best. All that hardened grease is a total pain and getting to it is complete disassembly central. That being said, my 40 an hour would easily turn into 300 total just for the cleaning portion, not including install.

But you’re right, if they nickel and dime now, it just means they haven’t figured out they’re going to be getting rid of a jukebox lol.
That’s a good idea, ForceFlow. Maybe I’ll reach out to the gal that wanted the free repairs and see if she wants to sell it.

The one pic is it running with the room lights off. The other are from when it first arrived at my house. When these sit unused for long periods of time, it’s crazy amounts of labor to get them running again. I posted a picture of the pinbank- you literally have to take all the pins out and clean each one. There are 200 pins (100 albums x 2 sides) also clean both the wiper boards. The hardest part is the record changer itself, the whole thing HAS to be taken apart.

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Cool video. When I started fixing this juke and was figuring out how the “mechanical memory” worked, I couldn’t believe it. The whole machine in my mind was a “Rube Goldberg” device. Nobody builds stuff like this anymore since computers easily do everything that once required crazy mechanical knowledge to achieve. It almost seems like when transistors became commonplace, it was when quality of manufacturing quickly went downhill. Have you ever seen a Tonewheel Hammond Organ? (B3, M3, etc). Spinning wheels and electromagnetic pickups to generate tone, ingenious. As soon as they figured out a way to generate tone electronically, all of a sudden the organs looked like crap. Cheap particle board, flimsy plastic pieces etc. anyway, I’m getting carried away here...