CD player carriage playing up

[GreatBigHippy]

Got a CD player with an odd problem. I checked repair faq but nothing
really to help there.
The CD will detect fine. As soon as you go to play it will attept to
read but then fail a few times and stop.
I took the thing apart and replaced the CD assembly with another one
from a different unit that was working but am getting the same
problem. All the processing circuitry is on a seperate board,
connected by the power lines and the ribbon for the data from the
lens.
When play is pressed the CD goes to read but the lens carriage does
not seem to be avle to get past a certain point and the motors sound
like they are slipping. As the entire assembly was replaced I am sure
the problem must be in the logic circuitry somewhere.
The same thing happens if you try to skip to a certain track, it
cannot get past this one point...
The odd thingis if you give the carriage a little push then it will
get past the stop point and read fine.
Also, this unit has two CD player assmeblies in it, side by side, and
the second one works fine.
The only odd thing I have found was one resisitor that was badly
soldered in, I can't say for sure what part of the circuit it is on
though. This shouldn't cause the problem though as if the circuit was
broken then it shouldn't work at all?
If anyone has found anything similar to this I could really do with
some help.
Cheers,

 

[Sofie]

GreatBigHippy:
Sounds like you have done a good job describing your initial
troubleshooting..... BUT it should be obvious that you must post the MAKE
and MODEL NUMBER if you are hoping for anything close to a specific repair
suggestion..... on the newsgroup here we can not see your CD player and we
have absolutely no idea how your unit is built and the location of the
different assemblies....... different models are not built the same.

 

[GreatBigHippy]

Hey ho,
Cheers for the reply. Thought it might be a common problem as I have
searched the forum for other players of this make and nothing came up.
It is a Wharfedale WPC-318. Not bigin America I am to understand.
Hopethis sheds somebright streaming lights on the situation.
Many thanks,
Ant

 

[Mark D. Zacharias]

I appreciate that you've swapped mechanisms, but sometimes doing almost
ANYTHING seems to fix a cd player for a while. The fact that nudging the
mech got it past the skipping point suggests to me that it IS a mechanical
problem after all. Maybe both mechs suffer from it and the second one just
happened to "barely" work with the other board. I would examine the sled
drive mech VERY closely. You might find a very small crack in the pinion
gear (common problem, the small gear mounted directly on the sled motor
shaft), or some other slight mechanical hang-up. The gears, sliders etc
should be cleaned and re-lubed as needed. A small drop of light oil at the
top bearing of the spindle motor wouldn't hurt either. General maintenance
such as this fixes the majority of skipping problems.

Mark Z.