Most of SONYs high end machines were on steel frames, and very heavy,I had the first cd player, (cdp101)and then an ES model,the latter weighing in at around 10-11kgs.

Everything made in Japan in the 80's-90's were Gold

@@soldadoryanbr7776 Pride of ownership is a very underated quality in these kind of electronics, its not ll about how they sound even though these players do sound superb

@@Phil-yj7qx my father has a Sony lbt-a390, It is in my house since I was born, I grew with other Sony products too like the Playstation, I think I got attached to their looks,the Black and yellow from the late 80's,to the silver of the early 2000's(like the Sony Trinitron that I also own),the first album that I bought is "and justice for all" from Metallica,after the intro of "blackened" I could feel the Wood of the rack vibrating,it's a Monster,1/3 of the volume and I'm almost deaf

Instablaster.

Well done!! Aren't they great

@@hear-net-au Geez man even the internal dac is pretty dam good ! I am shocked when compared against my Denafrips Ares 2 I told Thomas n stereo Thomas- Tan how can this be possible this player from 1987 !! Let me ask you something ? Why does so day dual da converters but only 1 tda 1541 chip is this because they use half for each channel ? And glad its 16bit !!!! Man it reads fast

If it works well, I wouldn't mess with it. Service on it would be just belt replacement and cleaning of microswitches - both of which you can do yourself. Only if it ever started to hum or make some static type noise, I would then look at capacitors. But otherwise, "leave it alone". I get a lot of work on players that have been "tweaked", "tuned" or otherwise "improved", where these attempts went wrong.

@@hear-net-au Thanks for your reply, I agree! Cheers and all the best.

This is a fair comment. I too like the buttons on the front panel which are missing in this player. My Wadia players are even worse in this respect. Only eject/stop, volume up and down and next / previous track on the 861. Wadia 16 is even worse; it only has open / close and play on the front panel (but more LEDs which are not that necessary).

I cannot really comment meaningfully because I have never had any knowledge of this DAT player and had to google it to find out what it was. Apparently it was Sony Statement on how the digital is supposed to sound. I myself will only be using X7ESD as a transport having countless DACs at my disposal. But need to fix a buzzing issue with it first. I only noticed it when I connected it with balanced outputs to my #1 system and had no time to deal with it since :-(

Surprisingly not. I thought so too but Lampizator investigated it, and pretty mech every Sony player is quite different. They might look very similar, but under the hood they kept on trying to improve them in all price categories.

@@hear-net-au The X77ES is a low-bit version of the X7ES (which is 18-bit), generally speaking. Well, as far as I know, I am not an electronics expert, but the interiors (and exteriors) look very similar to the layman, so I think these two are quite related. Other players, e.g. 557ESD differ from these somewhat.

To answer this question succinctly, this player when properly aligned, will play ANY CD and well over 90% of CD-Rs (unless particularly poor media and/or poor writer have been used). This is no surprise, because it has the best laser mechanism ever made. The longer version is as follows: I do this testing to death and in 3/4 of my videos, I play tracks 8 & 15 of my Technics Test CD. Track 8 has 0.9mm interruption in data layer which is to simulate a wide scratch and track 15 has 0.9mm black dot painted on it. This is to simulate dirt or fingerprint. Any CD player should play these if it is to meet Red Book Standard and ANY PLAYER THAT LEAVES MY WORKSHOP DOES. Some players go well beyond this and play tracks with double of even triple that. I occasionally show videos with Burosh Test CD where players approach or even attain playback of tracks with 3mm wide faults. Additionally, I also always make sure the player plays CD-Rs. Since there is no standard for these, I have a set of discs that give some players trouble and make sure that these are playable (or at least most of them). The idea of cranking laser power is a bad one and is used by amateurs with no skill in servo alignment. Sometimes it is done, when a player uses a cheap, $10 mechanism (for the whole long assembly), and the destruction of such poor quality unit is no loss and it can easily be replaced by another one. In any other case, it should be a "crime, punishable by law", because vintage lasers are a limited resource that is being wasted by people who have no clue. Lasers are often replaced by new ones only to have player which only occasionally misbehaved, stop playing at all. In these circumstances, I ask clients for the old laser, I install it back into the machine, service the unit and send it back, for it will work for many years if not decades better than with any brand new copy. Unless someone was silly enough to increase the power on the original one and killed it. Sorry about this rant.

I might do that in a few weeks when I will look at this player again.

What you need to do is to put the player up side down, remove the cover and then the metal bracket covering the belts. Then they become easily accessible.

Thanks for the share. I have to replace the belts on my x777es cd player. I believe they are similar.

This has already been answered over a year ago: Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Night Train To You. It is available on ECM

Your problem is most probably the deformed and perished belt. You should replace them all and clean limit switches. Thanks for subscribing for I need about 200 more people doing so. ;-)

I am now working on Wadia 16 and it is really formidable. But its DACs are Burr-Brown PCM-1702 laser trimmed ladder DACs which are penultimate proper chips before cheap Delta-Sigma were introduced. On the list of all of Wadia CD players and DACs there are only couple of modern Wolfson chips - the rest ends on the PCM-1704 :-) vasiltech.narod.ru/CD-Player-DAC-Transport.htm#C As far as analogue design, how to do it was known decades ago. It was a choice (and perhaps knowledge or lack of it) of individual designers whether they chose to make it good or not. And of course a cost they were working to. Sadly, I know very little on modern Meridian stuff.

True. Bitstream DAC'd players were loudly hailed to be a noticeably big upgrade to the original & first multi-bit players irregardless of price & marketed as such, & the hi-fi press of the day confirmed it in reviews, (they were corruptible i think) . Proper music-loving hi-fi'ers hated the first bitstream compared to multi-bit irregardless of price & manufacturer, like i did instantly. The mags prepared bitstream to go as viral as it did through all brands of cd player, but It was twaddle, 1 particular hi-fi magazine i read (hi-fi world i think they called it) had a leaked internal statement (on Phillips's own headed paper) given them that they photo'd & published the picture confirming how Phillips designed the new bitstream DAC converters (also called "one-bit" & "single-bit" & more, by diff brands) purely as a cost cutting method for a cheaper & faster way for DAC production. I certainly agree that DACs have got potentially better but they've also got ultra cheap, silly cheap (see eBay china) to buy & for manufactures to implemented for extra profit. I think you'll pay a big price for an averagely good new one now to improve over a vintage model's extremely-good one like this Sony's. I fancy trying a Chinese made Denafrips model of discreet resistor ladder DAC, it can't do DSD or ultra-high res', & no MSQ (is it?) or SACD or super advanced DAC tech' just quality high-tol' resistors, good build & 16 bit 44.1 conversion & good power supply (like this Sony's is) . Upgrading the DAC of this here Sony would be seriously expensive compared to the price of a s/h vintage same Sony model i think. .

I would say that all you need to do to your 557 is to have a servo aligned. First checking if PLL frequency is correct. All this should take no more than an hour.

@@hear-net-au good morning, could you please tell the track playing in background? Awesome CD player!

@@montech5647 Emanuel Cruz As @Emanual Cruz commented rightly (in his post below), it is Marcin Wasilewski Trio, from the album Faithful and the track is "Night Train to You". Marcin previously called his band "A Simple Acoustic Trio". This also was for more than a decade I think, a rhythm section of Tomasz Stańko Quartet. A legend has it, that one day a rhythm section of Stańko was held up and late at some festival gig and Simple Acoustic Trio played before Stańko. So he asked them to stay and play with him and following the concert he offered them a permanent spot. After the death of Esbjorn Svensson, Manfred Eicher of ECM Records wanted apparently a new artist to replace EST and this was his choice. So they left Stańko. Or so I have heard.

@@hear-net-au Awesome again! Thanks a million!

Emanuel, This was a Simple Acoustic Trio which is now known (and since they started recording for ECM) as Marcin Wasilewski Trio. The album is called January.

@@hear-net-au Thanks!!!

@@hear-net-au Actually thanks to your references I found the actual album for that Track #2 played at the beginning of your video is actually from the album titled "Faithful". That song name: Night Train to You. A little detective work thru the online stream platforms and voila! Thanks for the reference again!

Pat, I do not have a manual for CDP-337ESD but in all Sony units in which I have looked for it, it is a 22Ω resistor in line with Common Base transistor driving the laser diode. In CDP-338ESD its designation is R102.

@@hear-net-au yep, I found it. Will measure it in time. thanks!

It is possible but it is not a trivial matter. I tried to get one guy who designes electronics for a living (and who said it was 20 min job if I give him all the part numbers from Wadia 16 input / output board) and he never got back to me. I now have 2 Wadias which need inputs (models 301 and 581) and can't get anyone to supply diagrams. For a player that was not designed to have inputs this would be even harder. Particularly integration

@@hear-net-au thanks a lot for your kind and prompt reply! I’m going to address this question to a local hi-fi workshop too.

Yes, that is probably true. Solid copper would be probably to expensive and too soft.

I no longer have it, but I think it was a heavy steel. I know a lot of English manufacturers use non-ferric metals in their cases, but Japanese mostly use just steel. Having said that, I might be wrong and it is not easy to check for me.

Why wouldn't it be repairable? The problem is not that but finding someone that would sell you his which is in good condition...

@@hear-net-au I have no specific idea except that I have heard about people being unable to get high-end audio components repaired when they have non-generic parts. Is a problem of this sort unlikely with this?

@@kinglear5952 I fix CD players for the last few years and have always managed to fix higher end ones. On couple of the lower ones I had to give up on occasion, because you can buy a working one for $400 so there is only $200 to be made and it is just not worth it, with time spent on part chasing, the repair itself, photo taking, preparing listings, answering questions, packing and posting them. Plus eBay and PayPal taking 15%. But on top end units if I spend good few hours, I can get them going pretty much every time.

@@hear-net-au Thank you for the very useful information

Indeed they are not. But as far as CD reader are concerned, these are "as good as it gets"

Sadly my friend I have no idea. KSS-271 was only ever used in 3 CD players and I am yet to see one of them, so I cannot really say anything meaningful on that. :-(

When I say that KSS-190A is the best mech ever made, I do not mean the actual laser unit. I mean the whole lot: the loader, clamp, the mech the way it is designed and the laser. Some of the BU-1 units are now 40 years old and still go strong, and if no one does anything silly to them, they are virtually indestructible. I have seen some in early Sony ES machines set to 300µW and they work fine for 35 years at that power level. I do not know about this ease of laser diode replacement either. The appear to be only two people in the World who can successfully do it and you are one of them. Whereas it is more economical in most cases to just get an early Sony player and use it as a laser donor (if indeed laser was at fault), in special cases, your services are invaluable. For those who have a rare and collectable player and want it in top condition, you can probably make these laser better than they were out of factory. No one probably would spend there in them days as much care on setting and calibration as you do.

@@hear-net-au I've seen in Sony Service Manual always noted 300uW as laser pickup power output, but, actually, power output in sony laser pickup is about 100 and 150uW. KSS-272a and similars is about 115uW, and KSS-151 and similars 140uW. If you adjust power out to 300uW, probably you'll sature RF amplifier. Another topic, replace laser diode is not an esoteric issue, in DIYaudio you'll can find some threads about it talking and discussing this fascinating theme. Best regards

@@manolomos I know it is discussed at length, but only you and one other guy can actually do it ;-) I have seen and have two Sony machines with BU-1 (CDP-302ES and CDP-303ES) which have laser set to 300uW and have been working like that for 35 years. One of them, I was the first person to open it up.

@@hear-net-au Something must be wrong. 300uW is too much for BU-1 and other Sony lasers pickups. 120uW is an average power output for those laser piskups.What is the model of your laser power meter? Best regards

@@manolomos I know all this but this is the case. Most player oscillate around 100µW with the exception of some Arcams which work very well on just over quarter of it, and some old Sony players which have 300µW. Same with a lot of Philips. Be it CDM-9 in some designs or even CDM-12. I have seen too many of them to think they are all misaligned. My meter is Leader LPM-8000

Do you really think it is of paramount importance? I do not. In the analogue days there was a specification called "wow & flutter" and audio components like turntables and tape decks achieved accuracy values of tens of 1%. And everything was fine. Why is it suddenly important to have atomic clock installed in a CD player or DAC? Other than a new industry being born of selling upgrades to audiophiles... A lot of top manufacturers to start with only ever used PLL and did not even bother to have a crystal based clock. Later, crystals become a common place but I have only seen once an oven put on a crystal to stabilize its frequency - a cheap to deploy way that is commonly used in radio communications. Equipment on some sites there might be exposed to extreme of temperatures and swings of 50 degrees between night and day. Audio hardly ever is working in such circumstances.

What makes you think it is control logic?

@@hear-net-au I have the same problem with mine. It is a know issue with this deck. I have been saving mine as well, but would love the control logic fixed. I had it fixed back in the day by Sony, but it failed shortly thereafter again.

@@daikuone where are you located? If you're in Australia, send it to me and I'll have a go at it

All ES series are reasonable. X222ES is not a remarkable player but certainly worth more than €50. It probably just needs cleaning and alignment. But of course it is impossible to say with any certainty. If you can't fix it, put it on eBay and I will but it from you :-)

Funny that in notifications I see a question regarding X777ES but when I try to reply it changes to X77ES. Anyway, X777ES has a KSS-281A pickup which looks good but is only featured in that one player. Impossible to find. The X77ES uses KSS-280A which is only found in it and another model of Accuphase (DP-70V). Also impossible to get. I have not seen neither of these players but I really like a loader in KSS-190 for it is the smoothest ever. But you are right these machines are just as good but also very rare. The op-amps on balanced board are TI NE5534P - nothing wrong with them and I wouldn't be changing them in a hurry.

@@hear-net-au Thanks for the reply.I changed the question that is why you get different notification.I will try to get the X7ESD for £700-£800 bucks on Ebay.I will buy TI NE5534P op amps and compare them on my sound card against the ones i like most.And if they perform the way i like i wont touch them.Hopefully i wont brake the whole machine if i decide to replace them 😅.

@@hear-net-au KSS-280A impossible to find, not to repair. There is a lot of comments talking about replacing op-amps, if it sounds better, if it sounds sweet, all this are bullshit, it like the tale "The Emperor's New Clothes". The most important in a CD is the laser pickup. If it don't work properly, the cd player is a piece of junk. I wish all the amateur works in to know how to replace and repair laser pickups, but they are all involving replacing op-amps. The audiophiles stupid belief has made a bad favour to the real understanding of audio equipment that had scattered bad and erroneous electronic concepts.

Adriano, I am in Northern suburbs of Perth. Some 3-4 years ago, these machines were going for about $1000. Now, they are $2000. When someone asked me if I still had one, I told him, that I did, but would want a bucket full of money, because I liked it a lot. He asked how much was this and when I sad $2k, he replied that he was expecting to pay this much. And he did. It went to Darwin.

@@hear-net-au Thank you for your feedback, it is appreciated. I am in Adelaide and I was hoping you were too! I have one of these units and I bought it new in Adelaide around 1990, cannot be precise on this. I have had it storage in bubble wrap for over 30 years, getting out a couple of years ago for a test and still working as new. I have a feeling that the $2k AUD is a bargain, but I have asked a specialized High End Vintage company in New York and I will let you know what they say. They have a video on a similar unit, which to me does not seem to have as solid transport and they are talking in excess of $2k USD. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j7qbfs2Tz9nFh6c.html I am not thinking of selling it, but I am thinking that it might be worthwhile replacing the belts, cleaning the switches and removing the old grease and getting some fresh one there. Is there a service manual for this unit? P.S. I have just downloaded the Service Manual 👍

@@AdrianoCisternino Good luck with the service. It is not that difficult.

@@hear-net-au thank you! I would prefer not having to send it to Perth, but if I get stuck, you might hear from me! I used to be a watchmaker, so I am quite handy with mechanical things, but I do not have the tools or experience to do electronic work.

@@AdrianoCisternino A, You do not really need any special tool to do this service. To get to the belts, flip the player over and access them from there. You need to remove one bracket which is in the way. One of my videos shows you which one. To clean limit switches, get yourself Electronic Cleaning Solvent from either Altronics or Jaycar. If you have ohmmeter, the contacts of limit switches should have less than 1 Ohm of resistance. Spray liberally into switch opening while working it on and off. If they read sub 1 ohm, leave them alone. Grease-wise, it is better to have less of it than more. Get a special grease from Chinese sellers on eBay. Pretty expensive at about $15 for the jar no bigger than the old camera film containers. It works on metal to plastic junctions and also plastic to plastic. Belts from Wagner Electronics or if you have an account, from WES.

The answer is... you have missed some microswitch(es) 😉 I think there are 7 all up. Would have do check to be sure. Did you do the blue one on the side? Observe them and make sure you understand which one is doing what. The one that's responsible for the tray out signal needs to be cleaned again. Measure all switches with ohmometer to make sure none is above fraction of an ohm.

@@hear-net-au thanks 👍 but it turns out the new motor was responsible 😡 bought off eBay!!! I took the original one apart clean contacts / oiled put it back and all work's smooth as silk again. With new motor it spun to quickly the tray was like Arkwright's till ( open all hours ) Ronnie Barker 🤣. Thanks again for your quick response , love your videos and knowledge.

@@richarddavey9547 Motors normally do not fail, but they do get dirty as was the case with yours. What I do if I suspect a motor, is that I connect the terminals to the µA range of my analogue multimeter and give a shaft a swirl. This causes deflection of the needle which I compare with a known good spare. This tells me if it has torque and if it spins freely.

@@hear-net-au Thanks 👍

@@hear-net-au Great tip! thanks

Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Train Home (I think). Previously they were known as Simple Acoustic Trio. They are an ECM artists now. Before being a trio, they were a rhythm section of Tomasz Stańko who "discovered them" at one of Polish Jazz festivals.

@@hear-net-au thank u found it, “Night Train To You”

Fully agree with everything you said

Most lasers last a lifetime of the player. Sony used a system where you could align the servo manually, and their lasers did not have to emit any more then 0.1mW. Current players that I see which use Philips lasers run them at 3 times that power, so they do not last as long. Because there are no adjustments and to account for variability of components, they run them at higher power. Or at least this is the case in the initial T.O.C. reading, for I would have to measure the current going through them to find out if it is not reduced during normal playback. I might do that next time I have a player handy and the Service Manual where I can identify a resistor in series with the laser diode. Thanks for that question. This will be a worthwhile thing to check, for I will no longer have to worry about high power being used by the replacement unit.

hear-net-au : thank you for your answer . I am 51 years of age and I remember these old Sony lasers lasting seemingly forever .Now if I buy a Blu ray player I pray to the gods that the laser lasts me 2 years. It’s sad how companies have gone for the race to the bottom. I think Esoteric in Japan May be the only company left that makes decent CD loaders . Maybe Luxman too . Was it the material Sony used for their laser diode that helped as well ?

@@jitrapornpha5104 There is no magic in Sony lasers. Philips ones last just as long and they used to use a real glass lenses from Carl-Zeiss. Sanyo lasers last just as long. It is the rest of the player that gives up the ghost before the laser does. If the rest of the player stays working, then so does the laser. It is the mechnics that fail well before electronics. With exception of some poor quality caps...

I get my belts from WES Components in Sydney or their Perth agent Westec. If you do not have the trade account with them, they will direct you to their retail arm, Wagner.

@@hear-net-au thanks 👍

Ivan, Just looked it up. Transport has KSS-151A laser and DAC has their CXD2552Q chips used in some other Sony players and some Kenwoods. It looks very good.

@@hear-net-auиспользование высококачественных компонентов это только пол победы, немаловажна инженерная реализация. У Sony это получилось великолепно!

You should see Sony Service Manuals from that era. Multicoloured layouts, folding out diagrams showing the whole unit on one page, signal flows marked with thicker lines and - what is so uncommon these days - descriptions of theory of how the circuit works.

Very true. And now they are not really that expensive for what they are.

If one likes Sony CXD8594Q DAC IC (which is used in only 4 players, 3 of them from Sony) and also like SACD mechanisms like KHS-180A - also used in 4 SACD players only. But not having seen any of them, I cannot really meaningfully comment, other than I myself would rather stay away from SACD players.

Is there anything wrong with burnable discs? ;-)

@@hear-net-au They say such discs are damaging the laser which reads the TOC.

@@marekdanko472 Who does? Never heared of this. Could you post some links? Do they say why/how CD-Rs would hurt lasers?