Restoration & Repair of OLD CD PLAYER | Retro Repair Guy Episode 26

[@RetroRepairGuy]

This restored Nikko CD player is now for sale in my online store: retrorepairguy.com/product/nikko-cd-player.

[@wallyf7020]

Another great video. I was checking daily if new videos were being uploaded. Say hello to Mrs. R.R.G from my part. I understand that list that the better half gives us to do. All the best my friend.

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi Wally! If you make sure to click on the bell it should tell you when I upload. I had intended on releasing two more by now but it became a small emergency. Mrs. RRG is quite funny; she literally asked me when my video was going to be released while I was chopping wood! 🙄😂

[@wallyf7020]

@@RetroRepairGuy 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@wallyf7020]

Was she looking for compliments???

[@RetroRepairGuy]

@@wallyf7020 Mrs. RRG ALWAYS looks for compliments. She's also looking forward to being in the videos again.

[@wallyf7020]

@@RetroRepairGuy then please place her more in the videos...

[@waynewootton5385]

i want to thank you about the cd it dose play burn CDs and you are your right you do reply your the only one who did a man as good as his word your word is gold thank you for reply your a good man

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi Wayne. You are welcome and my pleasure. As I said not always right away but I do. If you need more advice please let me know.

[@harjonoharoen5186]

nice restoration...from indonesia

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi there! Thank you. Wow Indonesia! Nice to know there are people all over watching.

[@Tomhyde098]

Great video! It makes me want to clean up my new LaserDisc player but I don’t know how to solder or anything so it’ll be a basic clean up

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi there! It's very satisfying, especially when it's old and dirty; the older and dirtier the better! If have a video that has a few tips for beginners I made a while back kzbin.info/www/bejne/fpebdXWifZ5opKc and there are many on KZbin showing how to solder. But don't attempt it on something you intend to keep. Buy some old five dollar piece of equipment somewhere and have fun with it. Thanks for watching!

[@violao206]

There is not a lot of troubleshooting here as much as just getting right into a refurb. Disassembly, Re-Cap circuits, resolder potential cold joints, clean, replace belts, lube, reassemble, and Bob's your uncle. This is pretty doable in most circumstances, except for that time that the drive motor might have failed. That happened on my Onkyo DVD player and parts are not readily available. One should take the time to assess if your motor is bad, it might be a total right off. YMMV

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi Michael! On my channel I try to focus on the restoration. Even when the unit does not work at all, most of the time it gets repaired during the refurb (whether it's a broken trace, a bad cap or cracked soldering, etc). Also, sometimes like with amps, after I recap the unit I do things like adjust bias and with this particular CD player I had to tweak it since it was having trouble reading burned CDs, but I don't show that. You're right, in general people should see if the unit is worth it, I guess with my thirty years experience with this old stuff I can assess that pretty quickly without a long diagnosis. But sometimes I jump in just for the challenge like the last restoration of a completely busted Tape Deck. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pF7Gm2mviZqUldU Thanks for watching!

[@RetroRepairGuy]

BIG DISCOUNT on items for sale on my website for a limited time only. The items were restored as part of the show and will help support the channel. retrorepairguy.com/product-category/electronic/ There is also a new Donations link for the channel square.link/u/xikGzrwa where you can make a ONE TIME or RECURRING monthly donation. It's completely secure and all proceeds go to the channel. I will include your name in thank you credits of the video, if you give me permission to do so. If you want to donate any item to the channel, please get in contact with me by filling out the form on my Website retrorepairguy.com/contact-us/ and make sure to select the subject from the drop down list. THANK YOU ALL!

[@sharptoothtrex4486]

Good work, lad. I knew you did a great real restoration. Even with quality reliable electronic capacitors makes this classic CD play last its longest. Good luck find other old CD played for restoration making those refurbished oldies worth big dollars on Ebay or Kijiji.

[@patrickdeunhouwer5926]

Nice repair/restoration. I would have started with replacing the belt and try again, but checking and replacing the cap is also good practice…..

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi! Thank you! Yes as I explained many times in my videos, the caps have a 15-20 year life span. If I'm fixing/restoring, I do it to last and future proof it. I won't leave forty year old caps in the machines. Just the way I do things. Thanks for watching!

[@oryandunn]

Did you have the service manual? If not, on the backwards cap, if it hadn’t blown, how did you know that it was installed backward? Is it possible the silkscreening was incorrect and the person assembling it was told to insert it the other way around?

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi and welcome to the channel. I did not have the manual for this CD Player, it was impossible to find. You are correct, when assembling, which much was done by hand back in the day, there could have been a mistake corrected. However, I based myself on two things. First is that it was printed on the circuit board as demonstrated at 9:09 for every capacitor (but again, that could have been a printing error) but the second one that confirmed it was that following the trace where the positive had been installed led to the ground and there was voltage on the other side where the negative had been installed and this was not a bipolar cap. So to me it was common sense that either someone had played in there before or it was a simple assembly mistake. Who knows where it's been and who played with it after 27 years. Sometimes having done this for thirty years helps you determine things without the paper proof, but I still scratched my head a few times on this one and wondered why. Thanks for watching!

[@plexnbrown760]

Awesome. Watching now

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi been a while since I heard from you. I was wondering if you were still watching my videos! Thanks!

[@plexnbrown760]

@@RetroRepairGuy apologies my honey to do list has been long. And I have been working on theater set up in basement in my free time. Next step in theater project is to run the left Rear channel in the suspended ceiling.

[@RetroRepairGuy]

@@plexnbrown760 Are you making fun of me now? 😂 Nice I wish I had done more in my HT. I wanted to put speakers in the ceiling but I ended up putting connection points on the back and side cause I thought I might change speakers. Few things I might do different next time but still enjoying that room every day!

[@plexnbrown760]

@@RetroRepairGuy hack jobbed mine as well I am using inherited speakers from 90s and goodwill electronics but means to end we now have 100 inch fixed screen with a budget epson 1080 and love it

[@RetroRepairGuy]

@@plexnbrown760 Well if you saw my HT episode, you know I even purchased fifty dollar back speakers and a Optoma DLP at 1080P. But the point is that we are enjoying, mine is 120", I went to the max I could and it can all be upgraded later. My amp is nine years old. So far, everyone who comes still envies it and love watching movies there. By the way with new technology, these projectors are pretty amazing as compared to in the day and what you had to pay to get the same quality. The 1080P playing a Blu-ray (from the player) is stunning and bright. And my lamp is 500 hours past it's lifespan and still going bright and strong.

[@waynewootton5385]

i have a teac p1250 5 disc changer it won't play any burn CDs is there a adjustment on it or can you heip please reply thank you wayne

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi Wayne! I reply to everyone but sometimes it takes me a day or two. The biggest problem with the old players being able to play burned CDs is a problem many of us had back in the day but forgot about which is the burned speed. This old player played my burnt CD without any problem but I burned it a a speed of 2x. So first, yes there is an adjustment and on mine I had to adjust it because I changed all the capacitors so I had to adjust the speed, focus and intensity of the laser. However, normally you should not have to touch that. The best thing to do is to burn a CD at 1x or 2x speed. In the past they were coming out with faster and faster burners and if you remember they use to advertise things like "32x read 16X W 8X RW" etc. The last machine I have at home with a burner has a 32X write speed and by default most software will default to the fastest speed available. You need to burn it at a speed much lower like 1X or 2X which of course will take much longer to burn. The original CDs are physically printed as opposed to the way a burner writes the information at a certain speed which older laser assemblies are sometimes unable to read. As a last note, I would also make sure to clean the laser with a swab and alcohol to make sure it's reading properly. If ever you need a physical adjustment, you would need to get your hands on the service manual but at that point the player might have other components failing. PS I just read online some reviews from 2003 and 2004 about this player and people were saying it plays all burned CDs without any problems so it sounds like it's your burning speed. Try that first. Thanks for watching!

[@waynewootton5385]

@@RetroRepairGuy thank you so much for a reply most don't and thank you for the imfor.

[@RetroRepairGuy]

@@waynewootton5385 My pleasure! Let me know if it worked.

[@bobof673]

Great Video thank you. Can you say something about the laser intensity adjustment? I understand that the laser output deteriorates over time, some Cd players have a small pot on the optics unit to adjust this. If this is adjusted, does it increase the eye pattern peak to peak amplitude. It would be great to know when to adjust the laser intensity and when not to, and rather adjust tracking and focus only. linked to that, what is the ideal eye pattern peak to peak voltage to strive for, with a original factory CD? 1000mV i understand?

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi. In the videos I normally don't go into such details since the I made a decision from the beginning to concentrate on showing an A-Z restoration without going to much into the electronics part of things as there were too many channels out there that have very long videos explaining how to adjust and fix. I wanted to stay away from the tutorial and rather have a show with a beginning and end to each particular item. Hope that makes sense. However, that does not mean I don't answer questions. I just wanted to clear up why it's not in the video. That being said, there's normally a potentiometer for the optical pickup, focus/tracking and intensity. Each service manual will have it's own procedure and some could require you to use a frequency analyzer to perform the adjustment and an oscilloscope. You can then adjust the potentiometer until your waveform resembles the one on the manual, including the "eye pattern" in a sort of diamond shape at the center of the waveform. So it's not the same but essentially the kind of procedure for each CD/DVD. Also, these procedures should not be done all the time. If you changed the laser that's one thing but if the problem is voltage and you just turn a potentiometer higher, better to fix the voltage problem. Now that works to a certain degree but sometimes things aren't perfect and you must rely on your eyes and ears. For example, this particular Nikko CD had no service manual available and someone had played with almost all the potentiometers. I did what I could but at one point the CD refused to play burnt CDs and was making a grinding noise playing them. A small adjustment by ear did it; no more grinding and played the burnt CDs perfectly.

[@bobof673]

@@RetroRepairGuy thank you so much.

[@RetroRepairGuy]

@@bobof673 My pleasure don't hesitate to comment or write to me and have a great day!

[@haweater1555]

In your list of CD formats, you forgot "CD Video" by Pioneer around 1987/88. Discs can be played on any CD player with a maximum of twenty minutes of audio, and about five minutes of video in the analog LaserDisc format. Intended for teens to purchase a single music video at a time with a few more bonus audio tracks. Market flop for several reasons. New Pioneer player needed to watch the video component as older ones could not accommodate the smaller 12cm disc. Likewise older player could not play the CD audio component nor regular CDs. New player purchase is too expensive for target teen audience for the minor use of watching one music video. Buying a special, hard to source disc is too expensive when one could just tape it (and many more videos) off of MTV/Muchmusic

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Hi! Isn't that what I said at 0:35? I said Video CD or VCD and showed both logos and even added Super Video CD. Thanks for watching!

[@haweater1555]

@@RetroRepairGuy No, I re-checked before posting my original reply and you definitely didn't say "CDV" or "CD Video" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Video The "VCD" format was digital MPEG-1 video recorded on 12cm CD capacity discs or CD-Rs with a severe compression factor on an inferior algorithm for 74 minutes of sub-VHS quality. Popular in Asia (for its ease in piracy) in the 90s but never took off as a pre-recorded format here. Superseded by DVD-Rs due to ubiquity and cheapness of the players and greater MPEG-2 pic quality and running time. Currently in Canada, due to the "copyright tax" , blank CDR still costs more than blank DVDR. DVDs supported VCD playback from the beginning, but there are reports starting several years ago that the very cheapest DVD players (and perhaps even cheap BluRay players) do not play VCDs; no MPEG1 hardware decoded was included as a cost cutting measure that "no-one will miss it anyway." To be further confusing in the 12cm optical disc world, there are "CVDs" or China Video Discs, actually a minor variation of a Super Video CD without the license fees. VCD = Video Compact Disc CDV = Compact Disc Video CVD = China Video Disc DVC = Digital Video Cassette VDC = Volts Direct Current DCV = 605 in Roman numerals

[@haweater1555]

Another footnote to the videos format history were "DVD on CDs". These were DVD ISOs burned onto a standard 700MB CD-R. They had the MPEG-2 video data and all the special features of DVDs (interactive menus, subtitles, multiple audio tracks), but with much less playing time (say 20 mins.). They were used to distribute high quality video clips for playback with DVD software on PCs that would only have CD drives. But the drives still had to be good and speedy, not low-end, to keep up with the bitrate of a MPEG-2 data stream. It was unlikely that these could be played on a standalone DVD player as it would only recognize a CD as an audio disc, not video, but like obsolete VCD playback you never know until you tried.

[@RetroRepairGuy]

@@haweater1555 Thanks for the information. I had no idea that "CD Video" had been a precursor to "Video CD" and considered two different formats. Interesting!

[@haweater1555]

@@RetroRepairGuy Confusion between the format was all too likely. When quadraphonic LPs were sold in the 70's, the two most common (and incompatible) encoding methods were the "SQ" and "QS" formats, and some had "CD-4" (which stood for "Compatible Discrete 4 Channel" , not compact disc.)

[@paulamahoney645]

Reads no disc when there is a disc

[@waynewootton5385]

i will ask questions in the furture please sick around thank you so must for your reply

[@RetroRepairGuy]

Thank you please subscribe and check out some of the other videos. I just released one today. There will be a giveaway contest at 3K subscribers.