Laserdisc Service

Recently, I received a dead Pioneer CLD-V870 Karaoke style Laserdisc player.  When plugged in, there was no standby light. I performed the usual step of removing D105 surge suppressor from the power board since this commonly failed on some later models.  I clipped both ends and removed it, then replaced the fuse with a known working one.    Still, the standby light nor the unit would come on. Next, I had to manually wind the gears to get the tray to eject.  Once the tray was out, the power supply could be safely unscrewed and removed.  I inspected the board and found a number of capacitors.  Rather than troubleshoot one by one, I took an inventory and ordered replacement caps from Digi-Key.  I saved the list of capacitors for VWR1269.  Link here Before de-soldering any of the old caps, it is a good idea to mark the tops of each cap with the same directional line.  In my case, I drew a line pointing towards the front of the unit....

Introducing a new blog - Laserdisc Service.  This blog will range in multiple topics covering the service, modification and general fixing of Laserdisc Players. I began to get interested in Laserdisc back in 2017.  There are so many odd and interesting things about the format that have kept me interested over the last 5+ years.  One thing I immediately noticed is the high quality players are expensive to purchase when they are perfectly working, so the best way to score a deal is to get a player with an issue that has a documented fix. This blog will cover some of my past fixes and modifications, but also cover new topics.  As I get players in, I will post about the arrival, what is wrong with them, a diagnosis and ultimately (I hope!) a fix. My success rate in repairing over 50 players is 90%.  Of the players I cannot fix, I will save whatever parts to be used later since some are interchangeable.  I mainly work with Pioneer, but have worked on a couple of...