Electronic: Replace a laser pickup of a Sony CD Player

Hi,

a friend of mine has an very oldschool CD Player, a Sony CDP 770 from 1988. With the time, the laser and the lense has degraded and hearing music without any interruption isn’t possible anymore.

I decided to look for a new laser pickup and found a spare part for the original RSS-150A, I shot a new RSS-210A by ebay for about 20€. Let them give it a shot!

Here are the steps to replace the pickup. You only need 2 skrewdrivers. Open the chassis by loosing the 4 skrews in the cover, 2 at each site.

Eject the drawer and if present remove a CD. Let the drawer open.

Eject CD and let the drawer open

Loose the 2 skrews for the bridge sheet

Remove the bridge sheet

Take out the  skrew of  the upper gear wheel

Skrew gear wheel

And pull out the gear wheel

Pull out gear wheel

Unscrew and remove both slide rod clamp

Remove slide rod clamp

Remove slide rod clamp

Unplug both connectors from the pickup

Unplug connectors

Important: Prepare the new Laser Pickup!! The pickup is protect against electrostatic discharges with a bridge between two solder joints. These has to be removed, most suitable with a desoldering braid. See details at the following image.

Bridge of Solder joints

Removed solder point

Removed solder bridge in detail

Reassemble all parts in the reverse order. To put in the gear wheel you have to move the two gear racks of the pickup so that the gears of both are exactly superposed.

Move gear rack

Thats it. An Electrical adjustment of the track gain and track focus, as describedin in the service manual, was not necessary. From now on the Sony CD Player plays all CDs as in 1988 :-).

Michael