Interesting design, that player. They save a motor by making the mechanism more complicated but then they put a giant circuit board in there with lots of unused space and populated with through-hole components. Economics for electronics were definitely different back then. I can definitely confirm your findings about CD-R's. In 1994-95, long before most people knew that recordable CD's existed, I worked at a company that made software for CD-i discs. They had only a single working CD recorder for the entire office: a Philips CDD-521. It was one of the first recorders in existence, and it was probably as expensive as a car. I bought some blank CD-R's that cost about the same as a prerecorded music CD, and recorded some audio CD's and CD-ROMs. I still have most of them and most of them still play, even on my oldest CD-player: a pre-production Philips CD-100 with a laser pickup built in 1982. Like you, I had the best results with the early green (cyanine) discs. They still work even now, almost 25 years after recording (at a whopping 2x speed). But I always felt that later discs, especially the silver ones, but also the gold ones (phthalocyanine) were always less reliable even when they were new. I tried to avoid them so I only have a few of those. The blue ones (Azo dye) also work well but those didn't appear until much later so they don't have as much of a history yet.
95 cd recorder was 2000-2500 D^^ had a cd with at least half mm wide scratch if knot over 1mm? 1,5? and played -?- i mean the see thru scratch... also among my hundreds öff tapes one had a cm meddle oxide fall off so 1 sek no sound xD
Thank you for running through this repair. I watched your other video on the belt replacement for the Yamaha CDC 705, and then came here to see this one. My Yamaha needed to have the bias tweaked a bit to stop the CDs from skipping. Thanks for pointing out those trim pots for us.
The first single disc player I bought was in 1986 as I bought my first CD "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits. I bought the CD player at a Radio Shack for $170, and that was $100 off on sale! Three weeks later I had to take it back, had trouble reading discs and if they played, they would stutter. Being under warranty, it was fixed for free. Turned out something was loose on the mechanism and it went on to work fine. I also bought a standalone CD Music recorder around 1997. You had to hook it to the stereo and record in real time. I thought I was something, I'm making my OWN CD's! Now look how for we've come. By the way, those CD-R Music discs at the time were $7.00 each, a box of 10 was $70.00 so I had to be careful not to screw up a recording!
I also have that CD. Back when CDs were brand new the selection was mostly classical. My first CD Isac Stern's 60's anniversarry concert. Fantastic full digital recording. My first pop CD, because there was very little available in 1982 or 83. The GoGo's. Like most of the music from that era, no staying power.
My first CDP was the Sony midi version to fit my Mitsubishi midi hifi system. It had custom file and when a friend visited me I was proud to show him sentences I programmed before for every CD in the library. So my CDP showed “Fuck off” when I wanted to impress friends. My first CD was Queen “A night at the opera”
Great video as usual. I've cured many a CD Player/Recorder and Minidsic deck by thoroughly cleaning the optics by hand. I always blow off the excess moisture with air before testing. 95% of the time this is sufficient to get the machine working again.
I really enjoy all of your videos, but these fix type videoes are always a special treat. I inherited an old Bose AWRC cd player from my father that skips tracks and or will not read the cd at all? I would really like to hear my Dads old Bose cd player play in all its glory again. I took the Bose to a local repair shop who wanted $350 to attempt a fix, without any guarantee of actually fixing it; not having that cash to hand I took it back home and it now sits back on the shelf in my bedroom as a reminder of times past. Your video has given me the confidence to attempt a lense clean job, in the hope I can get it working again, wish me luck and thanks for the awsome video.
Thanks for this.There doesnt seem to be any people doing this.I have recently tried to repair an Akai CD-M70.I noticed first off the laser head mechanism was down the back,like it was stuck.after getting the transport out,and loosening the laser head along the rails,I noticed laser wasnt working and the motor didnt spin the disc.A pity I couldnt get it to work.Thanks.
I had a sanyo cd player 20 years ago that my dad bought around 1990 It was amazingly reliable and it played burned cd's no problem even though it was so old. Migh be kicking around my moms house still but she has probably thrown it out though. :(
Have an issue with my Rotel rcd 951. She normally works fine without skips until 3rd or 4th cd. That's when the trouble starts. I've cleaned the lens and nothing changed. Sometimes it will work for days without a skip and then it begins. It only ever skips forward. Should I lube the lens guide rail? Anything else that it could be? Any help is greatly appreciated.
I bought an onkyo integra dx-7500 that was in a smoking environment. I could smell that tar the moment i opened the box. I cleaned the outside to rid the smell and I removed the top cover to look inside. It did not look that bad. I lightly blew off the laser with a can of compressed air feathering the trigger. I stopped b/c I saw the laser eye moving. Is this normal? I did not clean it with a q-tip or alcohol. The player seems to play real clear and it plays badly scratched CD and CDR's with out any skipping. Should I leave it alone at this time?
I used to make parts for sony's CD stampers. They bought the whole inner workings of them from a company called M2 here in sweden. I worked for one of their subcontractors.
Single CD players were good money makers for me. I would buy them cheap at yard sales and pawn shops. Clean them up and align them then rent them out with a sound system for events. $10 per day. Always kept a good stash of them. I never sent changers out. They were just to much of a problem. I did the same with cassette decks.
@12voltvids I have a Rotel RCD-955AX. I left it on pause for a day and now the motor just will not stop turning. As soon as I power on the unit the motor spins and does not stop. The display does not flash any numbers, it seems to be seeking information. Nothing works all of a sudden. Any advice? Thank you sir!!
I just upgraded my sony cx70es to a cx555es but sound sometimes abit Fuzzy tryed with both outputs i assuming dirty laser or warn maybe can be adjusted but its old
Hi I have a Emerson boom box with cd player 1990 ...ac2503...i load cd ..switch to cd function ..cd no spin push play button nothing lcd screen read 4 black lines ...if i go out of cd mode and then go back to cd selector the cd always jerks a bit as if to start the cd but thats it. could you please tell me what your thoughts are as to what might be the issue ...have cleaned lens still nothing... many thanks for any help you can provide. cheers from Cygna6
I have a Krell DVD standard. It plays DVD without any problem but when it plays CD it doesn't produce any audio. What could be wrong? The display shows everything right with track and time just like normal but no audio for playing CD. As said, DVD plays video and audio just fine. Thank you in advance for your advice.
They may have used Sanyo chips but that doesn't mean Sanyo made the player. Rotel made some pretty good stuff back then. Check out the RCD-955 player. It had some auduiphile grade parts in it.
I have a Samsung DVD-VR357 that wont read commercial DVDs but has no problem reading CD's and even scratched up blue burned DVDs...what gives? The laser has 2 pots on it, labeled HI and LOW...can I turn up the laser with one of these pots? Nothing on the board.
Thomas Fanning No, as that could damage the plastic or coating. I just wipe the dust and smoke film away. I dont really worry about scratching it as I am not putting that much pressure and a small scratch wont affect it much because at the lens the laser beam is not in focus anyway
Yep absolutely rubbish bought one back in the nineties in a speciality hifi shop a big con . Was convinced while they were demo it but someone behind the demo equipment was probably switching a more direct input. Got it home tried it a few discs couldn't hear any difference and threw the pen out. A waist of $10 Aussie dollars lol.
In the early 2000's my brother bought a printer and wrote the key on top of the CD, adter that the computer couldn't read it. The CD info was written on the sticky side of the sticker label on top of the CD, since it didn't work after writing the key on the CD, he pealed the sticker off and the info was on the bottom of the sticker and the sharpie ink blead through the sticker..lol
Learning Electronics Cheaply That's why they always said not to stick stickers onto the disk. The data is on the top read from the bottom. The spiral grove is pressed into the top, then the dye layer and then the reflective coating then laquor on cdr. On stamped disks the data is stamped then the reflective coating followed by laquor. Put a sticker on and then peel off you will remove the laquor and reflective coating. DVD r are 2 disks glued together. The spiral groove disk, the recording layer, reflective coating and the. The top half of the disk. Much more protection.
BTW, Sanyo didn’t make that player, just the laser and some ICs. The player’s power supply and analog stages are Rotel’s work. I have two Linn CD players that use a Sanyo laser, those are definitely Linn designs.
12voltvids I think Rotel kit has been made in China since the 70’s, certainly the bits I’ve owned have been. It worked for them, it’s affordable quality kit.
Fivos Sakellis No reason. They operated in the same spectrum as CD which is infrared. That was to discourage people copying the disks and to allow for instant identification if someone did copy and try to sell them. Look at them with an infrared camera with an ir filter and they look clear.
I don't think so. The older dark blue or dark green disks were better in the older players than the modern silver disks. Crd is hit and miss on cd players manufactured before recordable CDs were devoloped.
The reason I was having trouble with that disk was because my AM transmitter was turned on. The signal from the disk is lower and the interference from the transmitter pushed it over the edge, as I showed later once I turned the transmitter off.
@@12voltvids Interference from such sources as said transmitter can intensify the reading problem, yes, but part of it may have also been due to the fact that this was a smoker's unit at some point. An NOS laser mech from a similar unit would fix this problem once and for all, even with the transmitter interference, even though you stated that they were a pain to acquire.
Colton Rushton For sure the smoke on the internal optics is lowering the signal. Incidentally it operates perfectly with the staples CD even if the transmitter is on if the metal cover is on. This transmitter is not a part 15 transmitter. Part 15 limits the output to 100mw. This one is putting out just over 1/2 a watt as one of the resistors was changed. With the indoor wire antenna it makes it to the end of the block before it fades away. If it was fm with half a watt it would easily cover the neighborhood. I just use it to rebroadcast an fm station on the am band so I can play with my old am radios. It does however play havoc with my test gear especially my scope. So i have to remember to turn it off whenever i need to measure something.
Consumer CD recorders use CD-R Audio and CD-RW Audio. These are special disks specifically for the audio recorders. Computer drives can also record onto the audio disks but the stand alone recorders can not record onto the computer CD-R disks. They have a special code written in the table of contents that identifies the disk to the drive. Without that code, the drive rejects the disk. Audio enabled disks cost more than the computer disks.
I had a Pioneer audio CD recorder, and it took the music only discs. I tossed it many years ago because 1. it broke and 2. my computer did a much better job, and I could edit the audio with it.
@@grandmasdeer5298 Unfortunately computer drives are no where near as good for audio, they are designed for computer data, standalone recorders are designed for the purpose
I and my mother smoke. Unlike alcohol, smoking does not make you out of your mind! Any way, every year I have to go through rolls of paper towels and spray detergent and wipe the yellow color off of the walls, ceilings and windows of the whole house. You spray on the Basen Tub and Tile Cleaner, wait a few seconds, and you can see yellow drips. Then you wipe it off and the paper towel turns yelllow.l I am beginning to make money with advertising my electronics repair company.
I have a Micromega Stage 2 cd player from around 1989. Now it just displays ERR when I put a cd in the drive. The disc spins after inserting it but after 20 seconds or so just says ERR. It displays No Disc if I open and close the tray without a cd. I've tried cleaning the lens but no luck. Could be a dead laser module be a possibility?
It could be, yes. Lasers get weak with use and CAN fail. I would give the cleaning another go. I f you have it to hand use 99% isopropanol (alcohol) and carefully rub with a cotton bud. After this use compressed air to dry or wait for 10 minutes to open-air dry. This usually works for me but nothing is a certain fix..
Thanks Les, I will give it another go using 99% iso (we have this at work). Nothing to lose at this point. It's a shame as I always thought this player sounded great even though it was always a little quirky.
**In theory**, the human-visible darkness of a CD-R is irrelevant, since CD uses an infrared laser, so the dyes only need to be visible in the infrared spectrum. Yet in practice, I’ve had exactly the same experience as you and most of the other commenters so far: the older, darker dyes (azo is very dark, cyanine is the slightly lighter one like in your video) work better than the new, light dyes (phthalocyanine). I have a bunch of old burned CDs with azo or cyanine dyes and they all work great still. I also have a bunch of phthalocyanine discs that play fine, but I’ve also had some of those fail over the years.
It's more down to the quality of the media and the ability of the CD burner to tune themselves to the disc, than the disc type itself. Older phthalocynanine discs from Mitsui or Ricoh are every bit as compatible as any cyanine disc, the newer ones are crap because they are cheap. In addition it was always the case that the better CD burners from the like of Plextor or Teac always made better burns than the rubbish from Philips in particular. The speed is also important, and newer recorders/discs generally perform better when written faster than if they are slowed down.
780 nm wavelength, 800 nm wavelength, 870 nm wavelength (infrared and red edge) semiconductor laser (early players used helium-neon lasers),[1] 1,200 Kbit/s (1×) Early plauers had helium in them, theu were more sensitve
I've been watching your Rotel CDP videos. I just bought a used rcd-965bx that sounds amazing but the Philips CDM-4/19 drive is making a chirping/swishing sound during playback. Some cd's chirp less than others. It's driving me nuts! I would toss it in the bin if it didn't sound so good. I want to save it. Any insights for a fellow Canuck?
Hey! Get someone to fix it! As you say, it sounds so good (because it does!). You hardly find a so much pleasant e accurate sound from any other CD player at its price or higher. I have a RCD 965BX too, (with open/close issues in the tray) but I never thought he could really sounds so good!
@@DoNaSbaR Yes, it's such a laid back non fatiguing sound from the Rotel. I brought it in for a service two weeks ago. Waiting to hear back from them. Fingers crossed.
The last good CDR for home recorders were made by Sony. Bought 300 of them and not one failed. The new discs are hit or miss. Some of the new ones will record OK at 2x speed but for some reason they will not finalize when recorded at normal speed.
Hello 12voltvids, I have put another teac drive and servo board into my cd-player. I have been having small clicks in the speakers. I adjusted focus balance, that made it search smoothly forth and back, and then I adjusted tracking gain until it would accept all discs and finally adjusting focus gain so it would be stable and even read burned cd's. I am looking at the eye pattern all the time to maximize it and get it clearer. Reading the very little informative servicemanual did not really reveal any secrets. But looking at the eye pattern while adjusting all parameters did. anything I do, reflects on the eye pattern. I also measured the laser over a resistor and got a value, divided by 22, multiplied with 1000and got a new value that I compare to the one on the lasers label. It would seen that it's 3 % worn. But I think there are many other factors that can make a laser become bad before that point of expected life time. May I ask you what e-f balance is? I think I understand that there are two coils inside the laser head and they move the lens up and down and side to side to read etc. But if there is no dedicated e-f balance on my servo board, and nothing on the laser itself, what can I look at as e-f balance? I also read that the coils are adjusted to stop whining. Okay, but what is exactly stop whining? I mean, they will always make a little very low sound on the whole adjustment scale. I compared to my other cd-player, it it shines and reads perfectly and have no clicks in the speakers. So I think that the laser coils whining is a relative term? Cheers and thanks for a good video. It's seriously hard to get a cd-player well adjusted these days and most workshops closed down, and many people get the music from the web or some sort of server. But I am very interested in keeping my cd-player spinning well, hence I started out myself. I hope you can explain the problems a little to me, so I can avoid the last few small clicks in the speakers, which I understand is errors that could not be corrected and set as flag level 3 - unrecoverable or something like that. The adjustments I have done helped it really much, and last night I thought I had hit the right spot, but there is still a fraction left, so by fine tuning or determine if the laser is having other trouble and is doomed, so I should look out for another one. It's a sony kss-151a laser. Cheers and great videos!
You can be sure that it's just for looks since the gold layer will have no effect on the audio quality. As long as the CD player can see the eye pattern in good shape you can be sure that the audio will be good.
I always heard that cdrs kill lasers, is that true?. I've always been in the mindset that the laser was on its way out and the cdrs usually have nothing to do with it. Unless, it's a unit that increases the gain on the laser to read better, but if I'm not mistaken most CD players don't do that, right?
you talk about the speed on the discs. why don't you burn them slower then? that is something that you adjust in software and i thought a lot of people did that. because a disc says a speed don't mean you have to burn at that speed now.
Luc Peeters No it can attack the plastic lens. Gets in around the lens can dissolve the glue or drip inside and do more damage. Generally a dry qtip to rub off the contaminated film on the lens.
Well been cleaning those things since the 90's and never had issues cleaning those KSS2xx series. I would assume that dry cleaning would cause more scratches on the lens. Just a fun story. Had a cd-player from a neighbour that I couldn't fix (mega smoker) due to crap being under the lens. The guy was specialized in very very small mechanical things. SMD size was like a car size to the guy. He completely dismantled the laser unit and cleaned it. It worked after he had done that. That was like 20 years ago and till this day I still can't believe what he did.
Couldn’t help recognizing the little blue wooden Sony screwdriver with the interchangeable bits n the background, pretty sure it came from a Sony service center as mine did. Never was able to find any replacement buts for them.
i can't believe you haven't tried to open these lasers before. i know some you can and get the toe lower lens and stuff. ps2 is one i know can do that and sure there are a lot of others can get into and clean really.
Fireplaces, wood stoves and old gas furnaces/heaters are worse on electronics than cigarette smoke. Vintage CD players were famous for skipping if a fly farted in the next room.
Well done, it's alive again. So it's not my imagination that the older green disks were better, the later silvery ones just didn't read so well. I was happy with 4x disks, what asshole done away with them :-( I also used some orange looking blanks too, they were also very good. I've had silver tevion data backup disks fail over time, can't trust them :-(
the worst discs are the ones that you can see through, pay a bit more for the ones coated on the top, and they work more reliably plus dont scrape off and ruin themselves.
Jusb1066, I did have some really odd disks that were green and white on the top coating, the underside was green, they were dam good. Tevion disks looked nice but faded, not good for long term data storage. Dvd's seem quite reliable as long as they are written slowly. My early days of burning disks was fraught with write errors and fails to verify, scsi systems just seemed dodgy for writers. Nero was the favorite program, but later free software proved better for almost any writer, unlike nero. Sorry waffling again.
I used to burn CDs and DVDs. I would use TDK data CD-R discs and they would work great for both music and data. I had these teac CD-Rs and they wouldn't work, basically the same issue you are having with your staples CD-R disc. I still have some writable CDs and DVD as well as some CD-RW discs. I cannot believe they still sell writable discs at walmart. Most of my music is MP3s but I still have music on CDs. The last CD I bought was Marky Mark and the funky bunch who is actually the actor Mark Wahlberg.
Yes I know who Marky Mark is, never listened to him. I think he is a better actor than singer. I still use CDs in my 200 disk jukebox, and I back my MP3s up on disk. My car has a CD player that can read both audio and mp3 format, which is nice as a 700 meg disk can hold about 200 tracks.
@@12voltvids Roughly, as this count may vary depending on the filesize, bitrate, and track length of each track involved, as they have a direct correlation between each other.
Naturally, but on average I get between 160 and 200 depending on side of tracks. I download a bunch from the 45RPM database before that got shut down, and because most stuff from the 60 and 70s were 2 - 3 minutes in length I get over 200 tracks on a CDR.
That is strobing with the camera shutter. I have video driving down the freeway on my dash cam and you would swear the car in the other lane's wheels were turning backwards. Hell there are times when I ultralapse where the white line down the middle of the road is going the wrong way,
I was going nuts trying to figure out why my 33 year old DENON DCD-900 CD player was skipping on some CD's, but not on others. A couple of drops of electric shaver oil in the right places fixed the problem. Now it's as good as new and does not have a scratch on it either.
Interesting that you think a single disk CD player is less worthy of repair, they’re pretty much inherently better than a multi disk player at the same price point and really good, high end multi disk players are pretty much non existent. That Rotel was a good budget machine, I had one years ago and used it with a Linn amp for a while.
12voltvids maybe it’s different here in the U.K., changers were fairly common in low end “all in one” systems but in separates systems they were/are less popular. Some of those Sony ES machines are great. The two linn machines I have here sound superb too.
We had low to mid range changers, high end single disk, and of course the jukeboxes. 50, 100, 200, 300 and 400 disk models. I have a 200, and I am always keeping my eyes open for a 300 or 400.
12voltvids I remember Sony making some mega changers that had a full index of albums/tracks on them. I thought they were quite an engineering feat but I’d definitely have wanted to use an external DAC, I’m a fussy audiophile nerd. Single shot CD players outsold changers 20-1 or more in the U.K. (made up statistic but I’d say it’s fairly accurate).
Come October if you are in Canada I wouldn't be surprised if you don't start seeing ads for weed, as they are making that stuff legal here next month. Not that it matters to me personally. Beer ad eh. Cool.
Colton Rushton I can see the lines around the block probably starting about oct 10. There will be people camping outside those shops awaiting the grand opening. Not looking forward to that day when I have to go into someone's house and they are puffing a joint. Actually that is a refuse to work scenario. They blaze up I pick up my tools and leave.
I don't blame you at all, there are just some situations that are not worth what amount their willing to pay. Hard to believe they are going to make it legal, I sure have not heard that but I don't keep up with that sort of thing either.
What political party started the tax on blank media? I believe it was the music industry giving politicians campaign contributions as a form of encouragement to pass these disgusting laws.
That was under the Conservatives if I remember. The ones in now are just as bad.Now we just bought a pipeline that they can't build because, and again it was under the former governments watch, all the i's weren't dotted and the t's crossed with respect to the national energy board and getting the first nations on board. So a few bands challenged this and the court found there were errors made, and the construction has been halted. Just as the government stepped in and bought this white elephant from Kinder Morgan for 4.5 billion.
Yuck. Nothing worse than equipment that's been tortured by years of tobacco residue. I've resorted to Simple Green and a garden hose at times to get rid of the odor and gunk.
