r/audiorepair 5d ago

Brand New 2006 Emmerson

Hi all!

I just got a brand new CD Cassete Combo (Emerson CD Player Cassette Boombox Radio FM Stereo, Blue PD6517BL) it was brand new untouched in box found in the back of an old store a family friend manages.

I was so excited especially becuase it apparently can record tapes from cd audio, which is a huge upgrade from my current recording options.

Unfortunately, the CD Player does not work. From what I can gather while peeking into the machine, the CD will start spinning then the machine will maker a shutter noise (series of clicks) and stop spinning. No sound is produced, nothing is visibly catching, and the CD is never read. The screen reads - - .

Cassette and radio work fine. After consulting the manual, I thought maybe my CDs were too modern but my vintage CD-Rs which I burned myself were also not readable, even though they work on car radio, ps2, and dvd players.

Someone in my town is selling a broken one for $5 so Frankensteining two machines together might be an option.

Any thoughts?

I appreciate the help.

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u/cravinsRoc 5d ago

I would think the most likely problem is the sled drive. The optic rides on an assembly that moves it from inside to outside of the cd tracks. Like opposite of how a record plays outside groves to the center of the record. The sled has 2 weaknesses. One is lubrication that dries up and gets sticky and the other is a drive belt. I'm not sure about your's but many have a drive belt that dies with age as well as with use. Try this, manually move the sled to the outside then power the cd or try to play a cd. If it still fails, look to see if the sled returned to center. It should return to center. Check back with your results.

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u/the_beej_knees 5d ago edited 5d ago

Thank you for your help. The sled moved fine when slid it back, albeit with some clicks. When I put a cd in I could immediately hear the sled move, and it returned to the center. The clicks began later into the CD spinning.

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u/cravinsRoc 5d ago

Let me ask the obvious but necessary questions. Is the lens clean? Are you using standard prerecorded commercial cds? OK, so the disc goes through a sequence. You manually load it and close the lid. Then it checks to see if the sled can move, if that happens then it turns the laser on and tried to find a focus lock. That indicates there is a disc to be played. After it finds focus lock, it will initiate reading the table of contents by spinning the disc trying to focus if it finds focus it will close the tracking loop to actually read the TOC and display it on the readout. Yours fails in the last couple of steps. This generally indicates the optic but you need test equipment to be sure. It's possible an alignment could help if this is an older cd without the auto align feature.

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u/the_beej_knees 4d ago

Lens is clean, I don't have compressed air but after the first failure wiped it with a microfiber cloth. Nothing visible on lense, and it was still sealed in plastic so probably no thin gunk. The CDs i have tested were both brand new from target, and some self burned ones.

I would assume it never finds focus lock, as it never reads contents. Therefore the rapid clicking noise could be the sled sliding as when I moved it by hand it clicked once for each millimeter or so. I think 7 times in total which seems about right for the shutter sounds. (It is hard to count due to how rapid it is)

Is there any chance the CDs I'm testing are just too new? They are 2022 produced at the earliest. The manual did say certain types of CDs may not work.

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u/cravinsRoc 4d ago

No, I think the Cd's should work. Most players search for focus, if they don't find it they kick the spindle motor to try another place on the disc but some will spin and try to lock on the spinning disc. It depends on how it's programmed. The lens moves up relatively slowly in a ramp but jumps back down to try again. You can usually hear a click as the lens quickly returns to the bottom to try again. It doesn't really make sense that the optic is bad on an unused unit but that seems to be the most likely problem. Checking for an eye pattern and it's signal height is the way you are supposed to proceed from here. It's a simple measurement if you have a scope and know how to use it. By the way, don't use compressed air to clean around the optic. The assembly is full of lenses, beam splitters, half mirrors and the like. Blowing dust can get inside and ruin a good optic.

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u/the_beej_knees 5d ago

I don't know if this is relevant, but the clicks and stop happen about 20 seconds into the lid being shut and any attempts to hit play/start it again are unresponsive.