Sony D5 Resurrection

[vanmeterannie]

I have been on a kick the past few weeks of actually playing CDs (I ripped them all 10 years ago, and have essentially been listening on random for a decade) and in the process dug out my first ever CD player, the Sony D5. I thought I'd set this up in our bedroom with a small powered speaker we already have. I dug it out of storage, remembering it hadn't worked about 15 years ago, the last time I attempted to play it.

So today, before I even put a disc in, I put lithium grease on the sled as best as I could without disassembling, and cleaned the lens with rubbing alcohol. Put a disc in, and it attempted to read...01, then 00, the spinning stops.

I tried multiple discs because I thought that if I could get the laser to move along the sled it might lubricate itself, and lo and behold, ONE CD fired right up, and played about 40 minutes flawlessly before it stopped. (A very late 80s Polygram CD.) Nothing else will play at all, other than this one disc.

Any ideas? I'm not really sure what I'm needing to do here to potentially fix this, or why a single disc will play and 10 others will not.

Thanks!

 

[vanmeterannie]

Tonight I attempted to remove the covering over the laser assembly and for the life of me cannot determine how this comes apart - is there a way to remove the spindle, or other trick to remove this covering? Also, if I trip the safety catch and hit play the laser moves and the spindle spins, but no light comes from the laser - does that necessarily mean it's toast, or could that simply be this particular player's startup routine catching there's no disc present?

 

[Bob]

1. get the service manual. follow the troubleshooting steps to isolate the issue
2. put it back together and mechanically exercise it.

I've bought several used CDPs - ranging back to its earliest days. all of them showed
less than optimal operation until I started using/playing them. CDPs that stopped
at higher track numbers, stopped in the middle of a track, failure to recognize disk,
failure to start playing track one - all disappeared with usage.

if after all this and that CDP still shows problems, clean it. these CDPs have a
very special sequence of steps that stop if they don't respond, respond outside
timeouts, etc.

 

[vanmeterannie]

Great advice - I actually had that experience recently with my other old CD player, a JVC XL-Z444 from 1987 or so. When I started the drawer wouldn't open, it would barely read a disc, etc., and now with some minor cleaning and adjustment it's working like new daily. (I haven't played CDs on a regular basis in years, and I guess the move towards streaming is causing me to revisit the format). I'll look for the manual - thanks.