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I"m done with these vintage cdp"s

H

hugeroost

Super Member
I"ve been buying these things for awhile now, mostly kyocera"s. Some were 800 bucks in the day, but that day has come and gone. I have 5 or 6 of them and they keep skipping and just not playin very well for whatever reason. My tech has been telling me for awhile to buy new stuff but I keep finding these great deals on ebay, craigslist and such. I"m thinking dang if I can get a 800 dollar player for 100 bucks I need to get it, wrong, they still screw up. I have been wanting to try a cambridge for awhile now just didnt want to spend the money, could have bought two by now with the money i"ve spent on old ones. Looking at a Azur 351c for 549. free shipping, dedicated two channel single tray. Little more than I want to spend but oh well, gonna try one, plus they come in silver which will match my vintage stuff. Anybody got an opinion on cambridge audio ? ....... Roost
 
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I feel 20 year old CDP are destine to fail. My CDP bought new is 15 years old and is starting to skip. Will replace it with new.
 
ryuuoh, thanks for the link man, good read, need to look at that marantz too

jn229, my tech been telling me this same thing, should have took this advise long ago
 
The biggest issuse seems to be with the lasers getting weak after 10+ years and the lack of replacement parts for most models.

I don't think that the original quality matters much with this problem, it is just the nature of the device.
 
I just tossed my old Denon 1500II. It made a decent CD Player, an excelent CD Transport for my DAC and at 20+ lbs a fine door stop! Now I'm using my Denon DVD/Universal Player as a CD Transport, it does a decent job, but I want better.

I really like the Cambridge unit you refer to, as well as the Marantz Model. I think it would be hard to go wrong with either. It's my guess in terms of SQ, these units will play as well or better than all but the high end vintage players, and likely better then either my old denon CDP or my current DVD Player as a CD Player. Both were good mind you, no compliants.
 
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I love the Kyocera players and won't replace them until they crap out entirely! I haven't seen weak lasers. What I have seen are microscopic burrs on the white nylon racks and gears that cause skipping. A magnifier and X-Acto knife takes care of them. The other issue is stiff wires to the laser head impeding travel, or poor routing. Bend and untangle wires as needed. Clean rails as needed. Don't lube. They will also skip if the room is very cold because the wires are stiff. Unlike most players they have several electrical alignment steps that sometimes need to be done for best performance. If you really want to give up, send 'em to me!
 
You can buy old CD players? I source my supply from the 'yankee swap' pile (take it or leave it pile) at my favorite local emporium - the town dump in our quaint little New England town.
 
I think your best route would be to get a good modern player such as a Cambridge, rega, marantz, that has a digital out. Use it as a stand alone player for several years until you feel the need to upgrade the sound. Install an outboard DAC. Without buying an entirely new player, you'll have an up to date sound.
 
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ConradH said:
I love the Kyocera players and won't replace them until they crap out entirely! I haven't seen weak lasers. What I have seen are microscopic burrs on the white nylon racks and gears that cause skipping. A magnifier and X-Acto knife takes care of them. The other issue is stiff wires to the laser head impeding travel, or poor routing. Bend and untangle wires as needed. Clean rails as needed. Don't lube. They will also skip if the room is very cold because the wires are stiff. Unlike most players they have several electrical alignment steps that sometimes need to be done for best performance. If you really want to give up, send 'em to me!
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Conrad, I really love the look of em too, thats what first caught my attention, they go so dam well with the old silver receivers, the wood sides are nice. I was just watching a 910 on ebay, seller plainly stated it did not work, ended at over 250 i believe, so there must be a market, and the 910 was their totl. I just brought what looks like a mint 710 to my tech cuz it was skipping, he called me and said it wasnt worth fixin or couldnt be fixed. I would love to have that 710 working right, you think it can be fixed ?
 
I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. I've stockpiled a lot of parts and extra lasers for my old NEC CD players. I'm with ConradH on this subject - I'll do whatever it takes to keep 'em running for many years to come.
 
I am at that point too and have re-donated my Denon 1500 and 1500II. There is only so much space in the audio rack and I have a newer Rotel single disc and Yamaha 5 disc player. I still have a silver Denon DCD1800 which was Denons first player they produced in house. It matches my vintage silver Denon integrated and tuner so I will keep it till it craps out. My Magnovox CDB502 I bought new (almost 20 years ago) is still going strong and works great in my kitchen set up. I bought a Kyocera off eBay about 3 years cause I liked the looks. It arrived DOA.
 
rob, I like em too, just wish I knew how to work on em, hoping maybe I can work something out with Conrad. You know one would think the newer cdp would be light years better than the old ones, like this cambridge i"m looking at, but maybe not. We all know that isnt the case with amps, receivers and such, the old stuff seems better.
 
I have had reasonable success with older players, but seem to have a hit a wall with the NAD 5355e though. It appears to need a laser and I can't find the Toshiba it is supposed to take.

However I am very happy with the OPPP BluRay player in the main system and have other old ones that work well. And there are always those Playstation 1s to be found.
 
NAD has good ones as does Rega. I owned an original Planet which I liked a lot but sold it when I got the OPPO. Top loading is great in some settings but won't work for all of course.

"Typos in this meeasage? Can't you see I am doing this on my phone using Tapatalk?"
 
jn229 said:
I feel 20 year old CDP are destine to fail.
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Technically, everything is destined to fail. Entropy and all.

However, I look at a vintage CD player (or a vintage anything) as I would a car. For me, it's not the MPG, the horsepower rating, the glitz or the glamour. It's all about the cost per mile to operate.

What that means to me is that a car that costs almost nothing to buy ($500 eBay junker) and gets reasonably good mileage (30 to 35 MPG) has a very low cost per mile. Nothing can beat it, not even the latest electric or hybrid vehicles, on a cost-per-mile basis. And that's what really comes out of your pocket, those are real dollars. Make sense?

So apply that to a CD player. New or old, first it has to meet the requirements of sounding good. So assume that it does that or you would not be considering it.

Now, take the purchase price of the average thrift store CD player, say $10 to $50, and extrapolate out how long it would have to last to cost less to own than the latest whoop-de-doo CD player from XYZ company.

You never know what's actually going to happen. As you said, old things break.

However, for me, the cost of dumping a broken vintage player and picking up another for next to nothing is cheaper than buying a newer high-end device with a warranty. Even buying several vintage players still puts me money ahead, assuming again that the vintage player is up to the quality desired.

Now, if a person just wants a newer unit instead of a vintage unit, then I absolutely get that. This hobby is a lot about emotional appeal after all. But for me, I still feel I get more bang for the buck buying vintage CD players. Let 'em break; there are thousands more, dirt cheap. You can practically stack 'em up and just shout "Next!" when they give up the ghost.

It even makes our green friends happy. Re-use, doncha know? :D
 
I am with you Wiggy. None of my cd players have been new or at least nothing I have had in recent memory. DVD or BluRay players have been new though but they have been disappointing in one way or another. Except for the OPPO of course! It does almost anything I could want and very well, plus it was recycled...as in Free!

"Typos in this meeasage? Can't you see I am doing this on my phone using Tapatalk?"
 
Montycat said:
I am with you Wiggy. None of my cd players have been new or at least nothing I have had in recent memory. DVD or BluRay players have been new though but they have been disappointing in one way or another. Except for the OPPO of course! It does almost anything I could want and very well, plus it was recycled...as in Free!

"Typos in this meeasage? Can't you see I am doing this on my phone using Tapatalk?"
Click to expand...

My CD player collection at the moment is more than I need. In fact, I passed up a nice-looking Denon DCD-1500 recently for $15 just because I had no need of it; there will always be another.

My favorite remains my Toshiba XR-J9 from 1986. Tiny top-loader from Target, paid $75 for it new; it finally died. Bought a replacement and dropped a speaker on it. Bought another replacement at shotgoodwill.com for $6. Sounds great.

I've got a classic Magnavox made in Belgium, forgot the model number. $9.99 at a thrift store. Sounds great. I have a cheap piece of junk Magnavox made in Mexico in 1995, and it sounds just like the classic one. Put them one on top the other and switched back and forth with a CD I happen to have duplicate copies of. I swear I could not hear the difference between them, not at all.

I've got an RCA-labeled real rattle-trap junker that someone gave me, you have to press the eject button several times before it lets go and the RCA cables are permanently attached. Sounds excellent.

I have a Yamaha DVD SACD player that I bought in a thrift store, a real classic, cost $2400 new and weighs a ton. It gets hot as hell playing a CD, but it does sound good. No better than the others, but it does sound good.

I have a recent Yamaha DVD SACD that I got off of Amazon when I had a couple of bucks and it was on sale; overheard someone at a SMAC meet saying how great it was and I needed a DVD player with HDMI. Also gets hot as hell. Sounds good though. Doesn't play DVDs all that well, though. Skips a lot.

Then there's the El Cheapo Best Buy Insignia brand DVD player. Yeah, it finally convinced me that El Cheapo Best Buy Insignia brand DVD players do NOT sound as good as all CD players. In fact, it convinced me finally that all CD players do not sound exactly the same, because it sounds like ass. All the rest of the above sound the same. This sounds like ass.

I also have an Apex from the early days of DVDs; I see them in thrift stores a lot now. They were popular in the day because they could be hacked to defeat region codes and they played MP3-encoded CD ROM discs when precious little else except a PC would. It also works, it also plays and sounds pretty good. It does skip now, and the remote is junky. The mechanism is also loud. But it does work.

So basically, all my experience with junky thrift store CD players, especially the old vintage ones, has been that they sound terrific to me. The cult players and the 'who cares' models all sound the same to me. Only the newer DVD players that can also play CDs sound bad to me, and then only the cheap newer ones. The higher priced ones also sound fine; but they get hot. For some odd reason. Dunno.

I will keep buying cheap ones as needed. When they break, I'll get another one. It's not like thrift stores are ever out of them.
 
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