Record Magazine Assembly

Once the Tray Assemblies were painted and riveted together, it was time to reassemble the Record Magazine.

Other than the Tray Assemblies, the major parts of this assembly are shown here:

In all of the literature I have, there are no names or individual part numbers for some of these pieces, so my assumption is that they were not intended to be Serviceable Parts by Rockola. In other words, if one of them were to break or otherwise damaged, I assume the entire Record Magazine was meant to be swapped-out. Of course I could be wrong, but having been employed by several Manufacturers, and knowing how the Parts system operates, this makes perfect sense to me.

In any event, since I have no "official" names for some these parts, I'll simply have to make them up as I go along and call them out with quotation marks and "non-capitalized" letters. 

First order of business was temporarily assembling the "front ring" with the "rear ring" using the "spacer bolts", making sure everything went together ok, and double-checking the "clocking", or "phasing", of the two rings. The "spacer bolts" are threaded on both ends, and the end with the longer thread goes towards to front.

I have to admit that when I disassembled this portion of the Record Magazine I took quite a few pictures, most of them intended to show how the two rings "clock" with each other. It wasn't until after I was reassembling everything that I noticed that the keyway cut into each ring precluded any chance of assembling this incorrectly! Oh well, "film" is cheap, right?


The main thing to be aware of here is that the "spacer bolts" are threaded on both ends, but not for the same distance. The longer threads go towards the front of the jukebox (or towards the "top" in this picture). Once I was happy with the fit and phasing, I removed the "top" ("front") ring and set it aside.

The next thing I did (but something that could be done at any time) was to slide the "ring gear" onto the External Shaft Assembly. I call this the "ring gear" because of the small teeth cut into the internal circumference. These teeth will mesh-up with, and will be driven by, the Magazine Motor at some later time....

So here's what I had:

After removing the "front ring", the Magazine Counterbalance Assembly needs to be installed. This MUST be installed ("clocked") perfectly, as it dictates where the Tray Assemblies will be located. Thankfully my fondness for "burning film" came into play here, as I had more than enough pictures to show me exactly which slots were to be used, and what I did was simply count the open slots (in the old pictures) from one of the "arms" in the "ring" and line-up the Counterbalance accordingly. Of course I could have used my "spare/parts" 1452 for this, but since I had taken so many pictures earlier, thankfully I didn't have to!

The picture below shows the Counterbalance inserted into the proper grooves of the "rear (lower) ring", but getting it there wasn't simply a "slam dunk". For some odd reason the 6 tabs on the Counterbalance didn't want to readily line-up with the correct slots on the "ring". And while I was very careful when handling the Counterbalance the entire time it was out of the assembly, I found I had to "influence" it a little in order to get it to fit correctly. However, once it went into place, it was like it was meant be there, and everything seemed to "relax.

Based on my old pictures I saw that, working right to left, the "first" Tray Assembly was a "Keeper" (my term), and that the spring on the Keeper Assembly should be in the upwards position:

As may be seen, the next Tray in-line was a "non-Keeper", and I made sure to install the Trays such that the rivet heads were always on the same side (opposite side from what is shown above).

After struggling with installing the first 3 or 4 Trays I learned how to do this in a much simpler manner! I don't know how Rockola did this "Back In The Day", but what I found to work quite well was to place the Tray in the slot such that it was "sitting on" the "slot base", and then gently tapping it into place with a fiberglass hammer. I realize that they may not make much sense, but stick with me here. Here you can see a close-up of the "ring slot", and the bottom of a Tray Assembly:

The Tray Assembly is stamped such that it has a "bottom seat" (my term), and here it can be seen just to the left of the rivet. That "seat" dictates the height of the Tray, and my issues with the first 3 or 4 Trays was because I had the "seat" located inside the "ring slot".

Here's another way of looking at this, with the same picture simply rotated 90 degrees to the left, which will orient it "correctly" (as it sits in the Real Word). Now the "seat" is right below the rivet, and tight against the "ring slot base". Note that this Tray hasn't been completely installed yet.....

Here's a close-up shot from the other side, showing another Tray that hasn't been "seated" yet:

Another picture taken later-on in the process, showing the hammer I used to gently "seat" the Trays:

Thankfully, believe it or not, I managed to "seat" all 26 Trays without bending a single one.

Installing the "top ring" turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as not only did I have to align the 6 Magazine Counterbalance tabs with the "top ring", but also the 26 Trays....all at the same time!

Of course the Counterbalance tabs didn't want to line-up perfectly at first:

And I managed to bend a Tray Assembly tab:

But with a lot of patience and persistence, I was able to get everything bolted-up.

Note the "ring gear" has been installed in the picture above.

Before I finish-up, a quick Word To The Wise: Do NOT attempt to "draw" the two "rings" together by tightening the "spacer bolts" without having the "ring gear" in place! Why, or why not? Look at this picture here (a blown-up view of the second picture of this post) which shows the front "ring", but w/o the gear:

Here you can see that the "spacer bolts" sticking out of the "front ring" are not threaded all the way down, and if you install the washers and nuts and try to draw the two "rings" together right now, without having the "ring gear" in place, the nuts will simply bottom-out on the threads. In other words, you will have tight bolts, but the Trays will be loose inside of the two "rings".

I don't have a picture of this, but the "ring gear" has an indentation on the back side which accepts the raised bosses on the "front ring", and the ring gear, acting as a spacer,must be installed before you can tighten-up these bolts

Learn from my mistake! Don't try to draw everything together w/o having the "ring gear" in place!

After everything is installed, the Trays will not be "centered", front to back, in the Record Magazine Assembly:

In fact, you should be able to move them a bit. I recorded as much as 3 mm difference between front and back, and while I started trying to "center" them, I realized it doesn't matter where they are located now, out of the unit, as long as they are located correctly once I have the assembly in-place!

So I'm going to leave well enough alone, and worry about where the Trays need to be located once I have the Record Magazine and the Gripper Assembly installed on the mounting base.

Next time: Gripper Unit Assembly.