I know most don't use CD's these days, but I've always liked having physical media. Vinyl, Compact cassette and CD's. Most of the music I like is available on one of those forms and I spanned all three media popularity periods in my adolescent years. So there's nostalgia there too. Doesn't hurt that you can pick up CD's for a buck or two now.
Now, the days of walking int a thrift store and finding Pioneer, Sansui, etc audio stuff sitting on the shelves is over. At least it is here for the "golden years" of those brands. You're lucky to even find a compact cassette player now. Even a cheapo double well one. But, you can still run across a decent cd player from time to time as that is the stuff starting to show up in estate clean out and such.
I was walking through today looking for anything interesting (we buy a lot of DVD's) and went up the "electronics isle".
Sitting on a bottom shelf was a Kenwood CD-425M. 200 CD player. It was obviously forgotten and forlorn, cast aside as "end of life", dirty and missing it's front loading door. Last stop before the recycling bin.
A closer look revealed it was actually in not bad cosmetic condition. Most of the ugly stuff was just dirt. No scratches, noting damaged besides the door. Picked it up and the loading door was taped to the back panel. Closer examination revealed the door wasn't damaged, it had just been pulled off somehow. I took it over to a power receptacle and plugged it in. Powered up, went through it's start up tests, carousel inside worked on the skip function. No remotes or cables.
Looked at the price tag: 15 bucks.
Now, I already have a 50 cd player at home that works fine (Sony CDP-CX50) but it's as basic as it gets (no remotes, RCA only), full of cd's and I have more in the rack. A 200 CD rig would be a nice addition. I figured for 15 bucks I didn't have much to loose so brought it home.
Popped the door back in place and it seems to function fine:
I'm guessing someone was just a little too rough with the plastic door and it popped off.
Yes, this thing has a very deep case on it! It does hold 200 CD's after all. Luckily, my cabinet has no back on it and doesn't butt up against a wall, so it can stick out as far as it needs.
Powered it up and slipped a CD in it. It read it and spun just fine. Plugged in the spare RCA's from my stereo that I use for testing equipment and yep, plays just fine. Sounds good, like any CD player does.
Went to HifiEngine and the owners manual and service manual is available, so I downloaded them. That's an nice bonus.
Then gave the unit a good exterior cleaning. Doesn't look too bad all spiffed up:
Plastic need a little more polishing, it's pretty dry and thirsty. The cabinet is remarkably scratch free.
Has RCA's and optical outs:
Although I'll just be using the RCA's. The SL16 stuff seems to be proprietary Kenwood system stuff:
The 232 plug is interesting. Seems it can be PC controlled, although that appears to have been through a Kenwood "PCLink" software package called "Netnamer", which is no longer available. Probably wouldn't work today anyways as this is a windows XP era rig.
It originally came with a remote control and or all things, an IR keyboard. I dug around on ebay and came across a couple of the keyboards:
So I grabbed it. Oddly, the keyboard cost several times what I paid for the player, but when you find this out of production stuff, ya just gotta grab it or you don't get one at all. I haven't read the manual in great detail yet, but it seems the keyboard can enter genre and title information into the main unit, along with the usual ffwd, rwd, skip etc stuff. I did root though the thrift store shelf with the PC keyboards and various remotes, but the Kenwood bits just weren't there. Probably thrown out at whatever house this thing originally came from.
All in I'm out about 100 bucks. Not to bad for a 200 cd jukebox player.
I still have to pull the cases off it, give it a good deep cleaning, inspection and lubrication, but seems a decent deal so far.
Not much to be found at the thrift stores anymore, but you can still occasionally find a small diamond in the rough.....
Now, the days of walking int a thrift store and finding Pioneer, Sansui, etc audio stuff sitting on the shelves is over. At least it is here for the "golden years" of those brands. You're lucky to even find a compact cassette player now. Even a cheapo double well one. But, you can still run across a decent cd player from time to time as that is the stuff starting to show up in estate clean out and such.
I was walking through today looking for anything interesting (we buy a lot of DVD's) and went up the "electronics isle".
Sitting on a bottom shelf was a Kenwood CD-425M. 200 CD player. It was obviously forgotten and forlorn, cast aside as "end of life", dirty and missing it's front loading door. Last stop before the recycling bin.
A closer look revealed it was actually in not bad cosmetic condition. Most of the ugly stuff was just dirt. No scratches, noting damaged besides the door. Picked it up and the loading door was taped to the back panel. Closer examination revealed the door wasn't damaged, it had just been pulled off somehow. I took it over to a power receptacle and plugged it in. Powered up, went through it's start up tests, carousel inside worked on the skip function. No remotes or cables.
Looked at the price tag: 15 bucks.
Now, I already have a 50 cd player at home that works fine (Sony CDP-CX50) but it's as basic as it gets (no remotes, RCA only), full of cd's and I have more in the rack. A 200 CD rig would be a nice addition. I figured for 15 bucks I didn't have much to loose so brought it home.
Popped the door back in place and it seems to function fine:
I'm guessing someone was just a little too rough with the plastic door and it popped off.
Yes, this thing has a very deep case on it! It does hold 200 CD's after all. Luckily, my cabinet has no back on it and doesn't butt up against a wall, so it can stick out as far as it needs.
Powered it up and slipped a CD in it. It read it and spun just fine. Plugged in the spare RCA's from my stereo that I use for testing equipment and yep, plays just fine. Sounds good, like any CD player does.
Went to HifiEngine and the owners manual and service manual is available, so I downloaded them. That's an nice bonus.
Then gave the unit a good exterior cleaning. Doesn't look too bad all spiffed up:
Plastic need a little more polishing, it's pretty dry and thirsty. The cabinet is remarkably scratch free.
Has RCA's and optical outs:
Although I'll just be using the RCA's. The SL16 stuff seems to be proprietary Kenwood system stuff:
The 232 plug is interesting. Seems it can be PC controlled, although that appears to have been through a Kenwood "PCLink" software package called "Netnamer", which is no longer available. Probably wouldn't work today anyways as this is a windows XP era rig.
It originally came with a remote control and or all things, an IR keyboard. I dug around on ebay and came across a couple of the keyboards:
So I grabbed it. Oddly, the keyboard cost several times what I paid for the player, but when you find this out of production stuff, ya just gotta grab it or you don't get one at all. I haven't read the manual in great detail yet, but it seems the keyboard can enter genre and title information into the main unit, along with the usual ffwd, rwd, skip etc stuff. I did root though the thrift store shelf with the PC keyboards and various remotes, but the Kenwood bits just weren't there. Probably thrown out at whatever house this thing originally came from.
All in I'm out about 100 bucks. Not to bad for a 200 cd jukebox player.
I still have to pull the cases off it, give it a good deep cleaning, inspection and lubrication, but seems a decent deal so far.
Not much to be found at the thrift stores anymore, but you can still occasionally find a small diamond in the rough.....
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