What a load of b***s**t. These swing arm laser pickups are the best ever made and they almost never fail, even not after 30 years. The mentioned Sony mechanisms tend to fail much more. In the very unlikely case that the laser would fail, just pick up the cheapest second hand player with the same mechanism and swap them. But like I said, these laser pickups failing is extremely rare. Almost always the problem is (as mentioned by others) a dirty lens, wear of the clamp or (mostly with these these players from 30 years ago) the elco's on the servoboard have gone bad (a well known problem with Philips/Magnavox/Marantz players from the eighties).