CD Player repairs....

webmaster

New Member
Had to report on this as it made me chuckle.

My trusty Marantz CD40 which was the first CD player I bought roughly 22 years ago decided to finally fail on me. The tray started to make all sorts of clunking noises on it's way in and out, and finally decided it wouldn't open tonight.

Having paid about £120 for it 22 years ago, I decided I was being robbed if I threw it away now, so I opened it up to have a look.

Turned out that some of the teeth on the gear that drives the tray in and out had snapped off. I blame Mrs Webmaster as she was the last person to touch it and was probably a bit over enthusiastic forcing in her new "Best of Meat Loaf" CD ! :LOL:

Anyway I've super glued it back together and it works, but it's quite rough and I recon it will last about 2 days tops.

So for a laugh I jumped on Ebay, firstly I found that good working units sell for £70 :eek: Then for a laugh I searched for "CD gear wheel" and would you believe you can actually buy the exact replacement part I needed, brand new !

IMG_2982.jpg


So I've ordered one, and am now quite chuffed.

I love this cd player, it was best I could afford at the time as a student, but was just about the last of the 16bit ones before they all went bitstream, and has a much nicer sound.

During my search I found this guy doing DAC and Tube output conversions on them, which looks really interesting.

http://lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/MARANTZ 40/marantz CD40 lampizator.html
 
The early CD players tend to actually have a much better crc implementation than more recent models, with the ability to mask scratches made symmetrically on a disk. Well worth saving!

Rich
 
To be honest, if it had been irrepairable, I would have probably bought another identical one 2nd hand, rather than risk the tat that they're selling these days. Years of cheap midi systems and mp3's have lowered the public's expectations to such a level that I despair, really I do.
 
i dont pay for music unless its on vinyl these days... i understand the technicalities perfectly. But i think a few crackles sounds much better than digital distortion caused by the stupidly low sample rate of cds...
 
What has disappointed me most is the failure of DVD Audio, when it was anounced I thought "Great, at last digital audio that might cut the mustard", but apart from a bit of niche classical stuff it never happened, and then we took a massive backward step with MP3, the equivalent of replacing Vinyl with Tape.
 
dvd audio is good enough. SACD though - that's insanely good. It is perfect as far as i could hear. Only ever bought one disk though.... (Dark side of the moon!)

Rich.
 
I still have my origional technics unit which I purchased second hand in the early to mid 80's goes atreat though I dont use it very now days. I have over the years repaired possibly hundreds of CD players and it still is the best general use commercial recording playback medium and to the horror of some I will say including vinyl. Those old laser units seem to have lasted well compared to later tech.

Graeme
 
Hi, I can't pretend to understand everything you are saying about the technology.
However I think they are the same as cassette and VHS player/recorders whether
they are cheapy's or high end, the actual carriages are all the same which is why
you are able to get parts to repair them.

Colin
 
With in a brand you can find many crossover parts and it is true that there were only a limited (initially) number of manufacturers of laser units and that many manufacturers used other competing brand assemblies but for the loading assembly most are fairly brand specific and used only for a few different models.

Graeme
 
rockdemon said:
i dont pay for music unless its on vinyl these days... i understand the technicalities perfectly. But i think a few crackles sounds much better than digital distortion caused by the stupidly low sample rate of cds...

I have to say I prefer CD's over Vinyl for the most part. I do agree with you, though, with some songs/music, vinyl sounds better.

There are some 80's underground rave tracks that IMHO actually sound better with slight distortion!
 
The biggest problem with CDs is the effect of antialiasing around the 22khz cut off frequency. The artifacts are what cause cymbals and hi hats in particular to sound overly abrasive. I think some people assume that this sharpness is clarity of recording, but the original doesnt sound like that. In reality the frequency of a recording on CD should have it's top frequency filtered to around 16khz to avoid these effects but this can only be done at the mastering stage of the original recording. Whilst MP3s lose much of the sound and dynamics in some cases, they do actually mask this effect from CDs!

Rich.
 
Classic Marantz CD players and repairs... :(

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I have almost forgotten that sad story, but now you brought back all those memories...

I quite fancied a CD-73, not only for its sound, but also for its looks and the way it was built, the unique tray opening etc.
So i bought one. Unfortunately it worked only for a week or so. Then it stopped reading discs and it just emitted a noise.
Local specialists wouldn't touch it. In despair i bought a couple of other used CDM-1 mechanisms and swapped them, but this didn't helped either.
I also bought another contemporary Philips CD player that was essentialy the same machine, thinking that i could use it for parts. But it was playing nice too, so i kept it as it was. Well, this one lasted for a couple of months. Still desperate, i found i specialist in Germany and after i exchanged a few emails, i decided to send it in Germany for repair and refurbishment. Well, i should have known better. The specialist turned out to be another lost case, i have never heard back from him. Later, i learned from a German HiFi forum that a lot of people had problems with him, sending out expensive equipment for repairs, but nothing happening at all. They told me that his house/lab is stacked with boxed of HiFi appliances for repair, but he doesn't do anything. There are people that have taken him to the courts, and finally got their property back, but for me, being so far away, it's a lost case.
So, when i decided that i wasn't going to supplement my classic Marantz tuner, i went out and bought a Naim CD3.5. After all it may be easy for me to understand gearboxes, but electronics is a lost case for sure.
 
rockdemon said:
The biggest problem with CDs is the effect of antialiasing around the 22khz cut off frequency. The artifacts are what cause cymbals and hi hats in particular to sound overly abrasive. I think some people assume that this sharpness is clarity of recording, but the original doesnt sound like that. In reality the frequency of a recording on CD should have it's top frequency filtered to around 16khz to avoid these effects but this can only be done at the mastering stage of the original recording. Whilst MP3s lose much of the sound and dynamics in some cases, they do actually mask this effect from CDs!

Rich.

I meant more that CD's are easier to store! But yes, your explanation makes sense (I like DSP too, one of my fave topics at Uni! :D )

Your explanation may 'explain' to a degree why some tracks sound better distorted than they do 'pristine'.
 
Just to finish this thread off, the new part turned up from China today.



And the old knackered bit, very brittle, I broke it some more taking it back out.



...and it goes here.....



All set for another 20+ years service, lets hope I last that long :D
 

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