The other day I was dusting in the Living Room and after I moved my big Yamaha (as in main component) CD player to get underneath it I went to put on some music and the drawer wouldn’t open. I know it wasn’t the belt because I had successfully changed that with the proper size and thickness a couple weeks ago and it had been working without any problem ever since. No, this was something new. I was able to pry the drawer open with my fingernail and it worked just fine afterward, but the next time I moved it the problem returned.
I finally got tired of dealing with it, so I popped the cover yesterday to see if I could determine what was happening. I had the cover off 30 seconds and I immediately identified the problem.
There’s a wide copper grounding strap that makes contact with the metal tray when it slides into place. The raised nubbin that makes the actual contact with the strap was getting snagged on the strap when the tray attempted to slide out.
When I changed the belt, I pressed down on the copper strap a little too forcefully, and since tolerances are everything in this equipment, it made contact just fine, but was too tight to let the drawer slide back out. I gently bent the piece back upward a hair’s breadth, and everything worked normally again; something I need to keep in mind in case I ever have to swap the drawer belt on this unit again.
I don’t know why this just started acting up, or why it worked fine and then stopped once the unit had been moved (probably because I haven’t used it but a couple times since I changed the belt, preferring instead to concentrate on my portable players) but it’s fixed now, and that’s good enough for me.
When I was doing some research the other day, I learned that the DAC (Digital To Analog Converter) in this player was actually made by Panasonic. Panasonic, not Yamaha itself or even Sony. Panasonic.
Why is this significant? This deck dates from the period that Technics/Panasonic were pushing their own “MASH” (“Multistage Noise Shaping,” a 1-bit digital-to-analog conversion technology developed by Technics/Panasonic to improve sound quality and reduce distortion in CD playback) chips—yet there is no “MASH” branding anywhere on this player.
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