A couple weeks ago I wrote about receiving two Minidisc players that I was intending to use for my art project, and how I swapped the working guts from the red player I’d gotten a week before into the blue shell of the non-working one I’d just received and vice versa. Well, the red one was so pretty I didn’t want to tear it apart and just mount it. I wanted to be able to use it. So I went back online and located the cheapest working E75—cosmetic condition and color be damned—and ordered it with the intention of swapping its working inner mechanism into the red shell and then using the broken mechanism and the shell of the working unit for the project.
I located a kind of beat up silver-color player that was listed as “tested-working” for $65; substantially less than what these normally go for. I asked the seller for photos of the gumstick battery door terminals since that’s a good indication of the overall health of the unit and how it had been cared for over the course of its life. They were pristine; not a bit of corrosion on them. I completed the purchase.
The player arrived today and I verified that it worked as advertised. The shell wasn’t in nearly as bad condition as it had appeared in the auction photos. Yeah, the white plastic surround had suffered the same yellowing that all white plastic does over time, but the metal shell itself cleaned up nicely with a bit of windex and a microfiber towel. So I set about swapping the guts, and about 20 minutes later (without losing any of the microscopic screws holding the players together!) the guts were swapped and I had a beautiful red player to use and add to my collection.
The silver player’s shell and the non-functional mechanism that has now been transplanted twice have been mounted for display.
I have one more player/recorder arriving next week for disassembly and mounting and then I’ll call it quits for a bit—if for no other reason than I currently have no more wall space available to display this shit without moving a lot of things around.