Consumer Electronics: Sometimes Things Work Out

A couple days ago, my daughter's CD player/stereo decided to mess
up. It's a panasonic thing that plays multiple CDs. Put a CD in
there, and it made a heckuva racket, and ended up spitting it out.

I've not had much luck fixing the mechanical parts of these things.
Usually, some tiny plastic part breaks, and you just gotta buy a new
one. But heck, I have to try.

I open this box, and see some obvious mechanical parts; gears, and
slides and other things. This one stacks them up on top of each other
with these plastic hubs that go up and down. So far, I don't see
anything but this humongous hair that looks like one from my dog in
the hub area of the player.

I remove the hair, and everything looks OK, and of course I don't
have a clue about what I am looking at...

So, the electrical cord is behind some furniture, and the tools are
downstairs. I'm not inclined to move bookshelves, so it's down to the
shop to work, and back upstairs to try it out.

I take the thing back upstairs with the cover off, and put in a CD
to see what happens. The mechanism is not happy. It proceeds to
disengage each and every hub thingy from the storage spindle, and
deposit them on the CD. The Mechanism, not being happy, will not play
a CD.

Good fortune smiles though, because I can see one of the hub things
under the player as a slide moves out. Removing power, I leave the
slide out, and reassemble the storage hubs. Back upstairs for the
power cord, and a test run. I have the hubs on the wrong side, but it
sorts it all out, and two CDs go in, and play on demand. A third
works too. I am a ghod!

Back in the bad old days, when stereo components were hundreds of
dollars each, and 33rpm records were the media of choice, one could
sink thousands of dollars in the stuff. Today, one can get pretty
good sounding stuff for a few hundred.

Maybe, just maybe, one of these days I'll resurrect that Sansui 8
receiver, the Sony direct drive turntable, the Tandberg Tape deck, and
the Acoustic Research speakers; all state of the at the time, and see
if any of it works. I remember the Doobie Brothers sounding really
great on those speakers at one time...

I'd kind of like to compare the sound of it to the newer stuff. Then
again, I just might not be able to hear the difference.

Oh well, for the time being, I am ghod, and no one will challenge me
tonight! HA!
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Cheers! :)
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