A faulty SACD repair attempt

Bit late to the party here, but did you ever try reinstalling the original laser in your firt SACD player to prove to yourself that nothing else had gone awry,, If you get it back to playing CD's, you could always sell it on eBay as faulty/repairable and even throw in a couple of spare laser assemblies of dubious operability ;-)

Interesting, lots of parallels to the advice given when I had issues recently with a PS2 reading some discs but not others. "Twiddle the CD and DVD pots, here's a reference resistance". No dice, only replacing the whole laser assembly worked. Difference being, WAY more readily available to find parts for a PS2. Well done, even if it fought you the whole way!

This Technics SL-P1200 being sold for parts, probably has succumbed to laser problem. *sigh* https://www.ebay.com/itm/115264108506

Great video. Unfortunately sacd has become like vinyl expensive to collect apart from a few general cheap ones. (Think my most expensive one is roger Walters the wall). Now a sacd history video what a great idea.

I really enjoyed this. After having similar experiences in the past it’s nice to know that I’m not alone

Background color on thumbnail = I like 🙂

My first CD burner back in 1998 cost me a fortune, and only after I had ruined about 300 blank CDs, worth more than the unit itself, did I realise that the laser inside was faulty from Day One. Got a replacement under warranty, and used it for years after with no issues.

Another great video!! For fear of falling into the "why don't you try..." category, some person called "GrandTheftWatto" has suggested a secret menu fix. Obviously, you have the better replacement but I always enjoy seeing some adventures into secret calibration menus and might not take much time? Nothing to lose? Except a buttload of time, haha!

I'm wondering if maybe the three solder pads needed to be bridged in some other way for it to work?

That was a bit painful Mat lol,, I have a Sony 5disc SACD multichanger i got last year on ebay.Same issue,would not read SACDs..Actually bought it as non working as seller said he could not test it as it was an american plug,so took a chance at £24,,got a convertor and it worked,,but not with SACD,,Did some fishing on forums and found out they need to be calibrated by pushing some buttons to activate this,,Was strange to me to find out something like this budget player could do this,,but to my surprise it worked a treat,and the player sounds fantastic. https://www.sa-cd.net/showthread/115301/130363

Great video It’s the story that makes it interesting 👍🏻

I didn’t know what to expect after that intro, but damn, that was a roller coaster and checked all the boxes of what I’ve come to enjoy about your channel. I’m sure your core audience is in it for the Hero’s Journey and not the big explosion at the end (but explosions can be fun as well).

Obviously, you should have used Sony SACD Lens Cleaner, rather than the CD Lens Cleaner. 🤪 On a more serious note, the Sony PlayStation 3 will play SACDs, and can also be used to rip them (with a bit of finagling): https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/how-sony-s-playstation-3-could-save-your-sacd-collection Perhaps something for your upcoming SACD video? Edit: The Denon DCD-1600NE seems to be the cheapest brand new SACD-player I can find, at an MSRP of £1,199: https://www.denon.com/en-gb/product/cd-players/dcd-1600ne Pro-Ject fooled me by advertising their — reasonably priced — players as compatible with "Hybrid-SACD". Meaning they will play the CD-layer... Boo! 😒👎 Buyer beware! I'd still opt for that PS3, though.

Mat, another fascinating video into something I'd not seen or heard of before. I would also be VERY hesitant about batting around that 'meager skill level' comment if I were you. Anyone willing to use a soldering iron or some of the equipment you use is quite a bit beyond 'meager', from what I've seen, good sir. You have quite a bit more skill [and cojones] than some who claim to. I hope the Issues you are having [I'm type 2, by the way] fall by the wayside as time goes on. PLEASE continue the wonderful 'stories', and don't change anything - the backstory is as important as everything else! Just because the story didn't have a 'happy ending' [although it did] it was an excellent story nonetheless. Far as I'm concerned, my buck a month for this is one of my best investments in a long while. More should do this! SALUT!

Mat, it's awesome that you're being courageous and bullish about expanding your technical skills. Keep taking risks. There is not as much distance as you think between where you are now and what Andrew Chappell suggested. Certainly, less than the distance from when you first made that Tefifon video to now. It's true that it's "beyond [your] ... skill level." It's not beyond your capacity.

I'm not thinking straight most of the time, either. And ironically I was watching a video which mentioned the sunk cost fallacy right before this. This is a perfect example of that!

While you are spot on that you shouldn't mess with the potentiometers of an existing factory calibrated laser, it can be necessary to adjust them when replacing the laser assembly. I've found very similar experiences when swapping lasers of DVD drives - you replace them, everything is broken but careful adjustment of these can often bring it back to life. Sony have exceptional service manuals available, and they describe how to do this - however it does involve using an oscilloscope to measure test points and careful adjustment, not for the faint of heart! However before sending it off to e-waste there might be something simpler to try - there's an automatic calibration mode present in the service menu which should be able to increase the laser gain and might get it reading discs again! In theory you are supposed to use a special sony test disc, but it could be worth giving it a bash with one of your hybrid cds. I appreciate you might just be done with the thing right now, but if you do want to check out the service manual https://elektrotanya.com/sony_scd-x501es_ver.1.1.pdf/download.html, then Section 5 on Page 12 describes the U-CON check procedure. Also massive apologies if you've tried all this - I don't want to be one of those annoying commenters you've spoken about, but figured it might be worth a quick bash as I hate just sending kit like this off to recycling if it can be resurrected, especially after spending so much money on trying to repair it! Your content is as wonderful as ever, and I very much enjoy watching your videos at whatever pace you can comfortably produce them - thanks for being so informative and please don't go all TikTok and change your story telling process :)

This video is in my personal top ten of Techmoan videos from a pure entertainment standpoint. It was cut with nice flashbacks and overall well made. But it was very hard to watch. I just felt sorry all the time having read the title of the video in the first place and knowing what was about to come.

I bought two t-shirts off of your store and got them. They are nice. I hope the little bit of profit helps ease the pain of the laser purchases! Both of my SACD players are actually DVD/Blu-Ray players as well.

it's a sad fact in this throw away age that it's cheaper to buy a new unit than to repair the old one,but i am like you and would have a go any way then say to myself i should have binned it and bought a replacement that's why i have 5 Sony Dolby S Cassette Decks 2 work and the other 3 are for spares lol just a shame that my Revox B215 never got Dolby S but it sounds great with Dolby C

Well, dang. Sorry, Mat. BUT ... the cautionary words at the end were, I thought, a good way to wrap it up.

Thanks for the video! I enjoyed your comment about why you want to own a SACD player. Take care,

If anyone is interested I wrote about my experiences of laser replacement here: https://universaldiscoverymethodology.com/2015/08/04/reparing-a-teac-cd-p1450-cd-player/

Good honest video well worth the watch thanks 🙂

Great video - thanks - and gutted that it didn't work out. I think you were pretty unlucky though. I suspect that laser part is particularly sensitive being an SACD one, I have swapped out lasers on standard CD players before without too much trouble (other than forgetting to remove the solder bridge). What was interesting was that even quite expensive players (eg a Tascam rack mount unit) used a cheap and cheerful Sanyo mechanism which is widely cloned. I was able to replace it for about 8 quid. Hats off to you though for persevering and thank again for the video

Thanks for the video Mat. I'm type 1 and goofed when hypo too.

Tough luck with the repair! As you say, sometimes that's just the way it goes. But the new player looks very nice.

Wonder if you could move the laser unit from the first whole carrier unit you bought to the second or original carrier. Very common on Sony consoles to just replace the laser unit itself.

Excellent video. So much of the YouTube content is Broken->Fixed and the world absolutely isn't like that. Showing failures and diagnosis is the only way to learn. I've started skipping some creator's videos where it's repairing another "this-n-that". I love the deep dive on interesting problems. Thank you for the effort Mat!

Have to admit at first sight I thought it was a safety transit cover on the new laser. There is a good reason I don't attempt repairs myself!

Nice SACD replacement for your HiFi system. I really would like see your rack…

Wish you all the best with the family, I understand that some distraction is good, look what makes you feel the best in this situation! Take care! I like this kind of video BTW, just a journey to something. About the lens cleaning: I used to have very good results with that, but mostly with CD players from smoker's households...

One thing to do when you're going to do a repair is have a look for whether you can find a service manual online, it's often the case and if so go through it, it'll have helpful instructions about how to properly disassemble the thing, and will mention any caveats that may not be obvious but make the whole repair impossible, like if there's stuff you need to recalibrate after replacing the part and it requires advanced tools or worse proprietary test jigs/media. Also procedures, for example I likely killed the laser in an MZ-1 because I didn't read the manual in advance that said that this solder blob that shorts the laser must not be removed until all the ribbon cables are connected, and must be present anytime it's unconnected. The player was initially playing discs when I got it but a gear was stripped in the eject mechanism, I went all the way to design and 3D print a replacement gear, managed to fix that (it was a nightmare to take apart and get to there though), and once I was done the mechanism was fine but it wouldn't read discs anymore :(

That was fine, Matt. Interesting video. Failures are just as instructive as successes and as long as every video doesn't end in a disaster (which would be a bit dispiriting) don't hesitate to include the mistakes. Nobody is superhuman which makes you . . . well . . . human - and we can all relate to that! 😊

Percussive maintenance sometimes works, not often but sometimes, its broken anyway so....

What a great repair video - really enjoyed that. Shame it didn't work in the end, but as they say in France, 'That's Life' . I had a funny thought - watching you trying to replace that laser made me think that if as a schoolboy back in the 1970s I'd have known that one day in the future, I'd be watching a tv programme (on my handheld tv, no thicker than a magazine) about a man trying to change a laser in his record player - I'd have gone and told my Dad to buy shares in Flying Cars there and then. Great video, Mat - interesting and entertaining - what more could anyone ask!

Hey Matt, Thanks for the video, now I'm differently never gonna change the laser unit in my Beosound, always wanted to do that, not right now - it's like seeing an airplane crash movie right before vacation. Hehe, very good entertainment. On a different note, what screen did you have in the background? Can't remember if you talked about it before, is it any good?. I'm on a hunt for a new ultra-wide, or dual-screen setup. I have a Dell 29" from 2013 right now. Best regards. Jacob.

The Disc of Sisyphus.

You have more patience than I would ever have. I'm sure I would have figured out a way to break it simply by taking off the lid. By the end of the video - it would have satisfied me to put it into a kiln at 1,000°. Mat..😟..you are in my thoughts; please know you have a loyal advocate in me and many here. Please take care of yourself while you're taking care of others. 🤍

If you do want to try to get the old unit fixed, GadgetUK164 (based in England, somewhere up north I think) has managed to recalibrate some laser units (in game consoles). In particular it seems like some components which probably drift with age, adjust the focus depth, and might need compensating for in new old stock. Totally understand if “I bought another unit, it works” is the end of the story for you though! Ewen

If only all of you tech YouTubers lived in the same building. You'd do a video about a vintage audio player that doesn't work, and then dump it in the communal trash room. EEVblog would rescue it and do a video where he puts it under the oscilloscope and ferrets out each of its logic components and their function. Eventually it winds up in the hands of James Bruton, who harvests the motors and controllers for his next robot dog project...

I would have tried to pull off this “laser protector” of the new Sony laser too, even without having an excuse of low blood sugar…

Good to hear that you finally acquired an SACD deck that you can be happy with! I dipped my toes into SACD when I bought a Pioneer combo DVD/DVD-Audio/SACD player back in the day. However, the SACD output was so underwhelming that I felt I had been ripped off - especially considering how costly albums on SACD were. The Pioneer may as well have been "broken" with respect to its SACD capability. I'm not sure what went wrong or what was missing in my audio chain that prevented me from hearing the exalted aural magic of SACD, but I stepped off the hype train after that. It's only been in the last few years that I could really evaluate the sonic benefits of hi-res audio for myself, by listening to DSD versions of my favorite albums, and on the best headphones my budget will allow. (For me, critical listening on headphones is the best way to hear the nuances of recordings.)

When this one goes public, I can only imagine the volume of oh so helpful "You should have done _____" in the comments. Might just set a record. The fact that you didn't chuck the whole thing in the bin mid-shoot is honestly heroic!

Just as important to see what doesn't work as much as the ones where it does. One learns more from ones mistakes than from victories easily gained as some posh person said once. It's a real shame it didn't work. But you learnt something... Alas cost you a wodge of money to learn it. Well done video as ever though and me and the wife were taking bets on what would work and what wouldn't throughout! I think she was just happy I wasn't watching 1960s Steptoe and Son on the main TV lol .

Top marks - I'd have thrown the whole bloody thing out of a window hours earlier. Great video - thanks, Mat.

These obsolete music format videos are so awesome!

Even if the repair didn't go as well as you'd hoped, at least it kept you distracted for a few hours. All the best and I hope things improve soon.

I've never seen a grounding mat like that before. Does it not have a lead so it can be grounded itself, or did I miss it? All of the ones I've owned have included something to connect it to the ground prong of an electrical outlet.

Well, let's hope the video makes at least £300 in revenue. Then you'll only have worked for a week for nothing!

Hope all is well. I'm sure we'll understand that some things are more pressing, but you also enjoy what you do. At least you made something.

I gave away one of my SACD players. I still have one that is waiting for a rainy day and my friend who was my electronics engineer when I worked in the trade. I'm glad that I inherited some money so I splashed out on a brand new Denon 110 anniversary edition. Made 100 % in Japan. No more fiddling about for me Mat. The moral of the tale is leave well alone and either buy a good second hand on like you did of fork out for a brand new one at considerably more like I did and hang the expense. A good video though Mat and I did enjoy watching it.

Will be watching at my 1am break 😁

Needs someone to invent contact lenses for weak lazers lol .also as individuals if we added up all the money over the years we have (let's say ) wrongfully invested chasing our passions we all could possibly pay off the national debt. Lol . You look after your self kind regards shaun

The only unresolved question I had after watching is if you had tried twiddling the pots first to see if that actually would have done anything. I don't really need that question answered if you didn't, but the question did come to mind.

Well, we got a happy ending, just not with the same device.

Sometimes kt just doesn't work out. And that's ok. In fact, It is real life. I also watch metal detecting videos. Some creators will not make a video of an outing unless they find something cool. I respect the ones that will put out a video where they only find garbage, because that is more realistic. Keep doing what you do, Mat! You do a great job.

Can't stop thinking of grounding Mat to the grounding mat.

It’s always about the journey. That’s the best kind of book/film/tv/YouTube/etc. (at least you’ve made me feel justified in leaving things well alone!). Thanks for the “content”.

Good on you for not chasing the sunk cost fallacy with your old player. Sometimes devices are just broken and not worth repairing. As far as the family commitment / video production balance goes, just do what you need to do stay on an even keel. You'll know what needs to be done better than anyone else typing here.

Mat as I’ve stated before I would be happy to help out if you need some content…No cost! Hope things get better with the family, take care.

From one T1D to another, I hear you… I do a lot of micro soldering based repairs under the microscope. If I’ve ever botched anything up, it’s down to the low BM.

Thanks Matt. Take care.