Pioneer PD-204 - sometimes work, sometimes not - please help

[VTX66]

Hello!

I recently bought a Pioneer PD-204 CD player.
First time I plugged it in, the problem was there: closing the tray and the disc is not spinning up. I tried with like 5-6 discs, and at some point one of the motors started to spin up (with a bizzarre noise which was gone after a few secs). Then it did the read, and started play perfectly. From then, I played like 5 different CDs, all worked well.

Here comes the next day. I switched it on, ejected the tray, put on a disc, and the same problem occured. Not spinning up. Again, I tried a few discs (more than the first time), and nothing... and after like 20 minutes of trying I heard the same bizzare noise as the first time, and finally it worked again perfectly, no unusual sounds after.

And here we are today, again trying to open-close the dray with different discs. But now nothing. I've tried with 3 different discs alltogether like 50-60 times, but now it's not spinning up.

I've searched through the internet, but most cases were the lens falling out. I opened up the case, but mine's lens is in the perfect spot, no problem there.

I did a video of the inside while loading a disc, but wasn't sure what to film... You can see/hear the lens moving up-down 4 times, then giving up.

So... what's the deal here? It's really annoying me now. Really hope you can help.
Thank you.

 

[VTX66]

Update to the story:
I managed to capture the awakening... You can hear that squeaky noise the first 3 tries, then it's gone. Any ideas what going on here? (Sorry about that background noise)

 

[cpt_paranoia]

Slow startup can sometimes be a bad capacitor; it won't hold enough charge to power the device, but it eventually charges enough to allow the device to operate. I've had to replace PSU caps on a couple of Sony mini system CD players with these symptoms.

May not the cause in your case, but it's easy enough to check the voltages on obvious PSU caps (get the service manual from somewhere, to see the expected voltages). Measure the DC and AC voltages across the cap; high AC voltage on a DC PSU cap suggests it's gone bad.

 

[VTX66]

Thank you!!!

Although I don't have any tools to measure the voltages, this "charges enough" thing made me think... so I left it plugged in the whole night. (Because I plugged it out every time..)
And in the morning my first thing was to try it out. And it works!! For the first try instantly without any noise!

So this means one of the capacitors is bad.

Thank you again for your help!

 

[cpt_paranoia]

So this means one of the capacitors is bad.

Well, it suggests there's a good chance that it's a power supply problem, and likely a capacitor problem. Finding the particular capacitor that's gone bad could be a challenge... I was lucky, as there was obvious leakage from the faulty cap.