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.
Loose the 2 skrews for the bridge sheet
Take out the skrew of the upper gear wheel
And pull out the gear wheel
Unscrew and remove both slide rod clamp
|
|
|
Unplug both connectors from the pickup
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.
|
|
|
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.
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
Very Nice! It’s years later but this information is still useful!
I just picked up one of these recently at an estate sale – it’s in great cosmetic condition but won’t play CDs or tapes.
I’ve found a suitable replacement laser online (Sidenote, it is “KSS210A” not “RSS210A”, in your pictures and ebay) and will try this repair.
Do you have any information about the tape deck repairs? I haven’t disassembled my unit to take a real look yet, but it makes angry crunchy noises when I try to play, fast forward or rewind on both decks. From what I can tell from the outside, it looks a bit different than the late 90’s Walkmans that I’ve fixed so far.
Useful page with good info! Thanks!
Another question – You mention the service manual for this item, can you share this document somehow, or link to where I can find it? It would be very helpful.
Just picked up a Nakamichi CD Player 1 – works great on new CD’s but any with any scratches cause skips (same disks play fine on two other Nak CD Players). I understand this is common when the LASER is past it optimal / low output.
The Nak CD Player laser pickup looks to be almost 100% the same as the Sony – May use a different KSS LASER part specification shows a KSS-150A / KSS-210A – have to verify what is in this unit.
Will update on how this goes. Glad that electrical adjustments were not needed – the Nak is adjusted with a separate bench tool.