Category: Compact Discs

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Someone’s On Crack If They Think They’re Going To Get That Amount

Insanity.

Yeah, at the time of its manufacture, this was Sony’s top-of-the-line high-end player, and even now it’s legendary and highly sought after by audiophiles and collectors—and even I would love to own one—but not at even a quarter of that asking price. Ho one in their right mind is going to pay that amount, even if it has the optional wood side panels and comes with the original box.

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Belts Are Important

WARNING: GEEK STUFF AHEAD

Back in April I picked up this beauty off eBay. The seller indicated it was “fully functional,” but like most vintage electronics on eBay the description was…shall we say, optimistic.

Immediately after unpacking and powering it up I noticed it had severe drawer problems. Yes, it worked, so I guess that would qualify as “functional,” but fully? It definitely struggled with opening and closing so I wouldn’t have decribed it that way. As I’m sure I’ve documented before, I’ve seen enough CD deck repairs on YouTube to immediately recognize a stretched drawer belt when I saw one. I put in an order for a replacement with West Coast Belts and not-so-patiently awaited its arrival.

Replacing the belt after I received it wasn’t all that difficult, even though the belt and pulleys were on the bottom of the CD mechanism itself. Thankfully the original belt hadn’t yet turned to black goo and was easy to swap. The belt I received wasn’t a 1:1 copy of the original; it seemed to have a bit smaller diameter and it was about half the thickness. Still, by this point I had it all torn apart and I wasn’t going to put everything back together without first giving the new belt a shot.

There was an improvement from the old sagging belt, but not much. Using a belt that’s too small is just as bad as using one that’s too big. I emailed the company and pointed out the size discrepancy. They said they’d send out a different one.

Another week passed and the new belt arrived. This one seemed to be the proper diameter, but the thickness was still thinner than the original. “Better than nothing,” I said as I swapped it out. The drawer did work more smoothly now, but it still felt off.

I did one more search on the internet and found a another belt supplier in Germany. They didn’t advertise a belt for my particular model, but rather one for the unit directly above mine. These two decks use the exact same hardware; it’s just this higher end unit just had a few more bells and whistles in its circuitry. So I ordered it.

While waiting for its arrival, I thought I’d try a tech tip gleaned from all those videos: boil the old belt in water for about 5 minutes to rejuvenate the rubber and shrink it back to its original size.  I did that, and wouldn’t you know, after putting that one back in the machine, the drawer worked like buttah.

All was good until a few days ago when the drawer started lagging again when opening (or closing, I don’t honestly remember; it was annoying in any case). So much for my quick fix. The German belt had arrived a couple weeks earlier, but since everything was working I didn’t want to tear into the machine yet again, so I put the belt away for future use if my fix didn’t hold—and obviously it hadn’t.

At this point I really didn’t want to deal with this belt issue anymore, so I hauled out my “new” deck from a few years ago and put it in the system. What I’d forgotten about this new Yamaha is that something had changed in their implementation of the optical digital connection. Whereas the old Yamaha with the belt issues could dub optically to my MiniDisc deck and create tracks correctly, this new deck absolutely refused. The MiniDisc deck didn’t detect any track breaks so it recorded a CD as one continuous track that needed to be broken up afterwards. This was always a pain in the ass, so I decided to play around with belts again.

I mean, I had nothing much planned today and nothing else really to do, so I disconnected the player, opened it up and for some reason stupid reason instead of installing the new German belt, reinstalled the older, new, exchanged one. Everything seemed to work fine, so I buttoned everything up and put it back in my system.

It wasn’t five minutes before I realized things still weren’t right. Did I miss something when I was reassembling it? Did I over-tighten a screw somewhere?The drawer started shuddering (it’s the only way to describe it) when it opened. This hadn’t happened when it was installed before, but a shuddering tray is a definite sign of a belt being too tight.

Fuck me.

I pulled it out of the system, popped the cover, and removed the mechanism again. This time I installed the new German belt and it’s been working fine all afternoon. That belt is still a bit thinner than the original, but the diameter is spot on and the shuddering is gone.

So what did I learn? Like in many things in life, sometimes girth is more important than thickness.

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Morning Soundtrack

Ray Lynch – Deep Breakfast (1986)

Sometime in 1987 or thereabouts, on one our many little tribe’s outings via ferry from SF to Sausalito (being newly-relocated desert rats we enjoyed any time on the water we could), I first heard this album. It was playing in one of the many New Age souvenir/crystal shops that dotted the main drag at the time and I was immediately enchanted. Fortunately I didn’t have to go far to get a copy, as they had an extensive in-store CD selection for sale.

Playing this always envokes the emotion of that afternoon if even the now sadly degraded memories of what actually expired outside that shop are fleeting.

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“Eight Is Enough” Of Anything

Famous last words.

I suppose there are worst things to spend my money on, but collecting shit is a fun hobby no matter what you collect, be it antiques, Hummel figurines, Beanie Babies,  Candlewick glassware (in the case of my sister), or in my case, portable CD/Minidisc players.

Yeah, I know I should be saving, saving, saving with all the uncertainty in the world right now, but let’s face it: with that madman in the White House everything could go up in a mushroom cloud at any moment because someone disrespected his fragile ego one too many times and the only solution in his addled brain was to start WWIII. And even if it doesn’t get that crazy, none of us has any guarantee of tomorrow—especially if you’re dealing with ongoing health issues—so find joy in what and where you can.

And these little nuggets bring the geek in me much joy.

I’ll admit there is a fine line between collecting and hoarding, however. Fortunately I don’t think I’ve crossed that line, nor have any of my living relatives. My late father, however, was not a collector. He was a hoarder, and no matter how many times we tried to help him declutter (or even so much suggesting that he move into a new apartment) we were met with incredible resistance to the point of outright meltdowns. When he went into skilled nursing and we knew he’d never be going home again, I spent a couple days cleaning his place while I was in town and ended up filling an entire residential dumpster. After he passed it was a Herculean task for my sister (I was back in Denver at the time) to clean the rest of his place out and get it ready for sale.

I hope that when my time comes, whoever has to go through all my shit doesn’t feel like I had crossed the line.

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Released 40 Years Ago Today

Madonna: True Blue (1986)

From Behind the Grooves: (sadly, link is broken as of 2026)

“True Blue”, the third album by Madonna is released. Produced by Madonna, Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, it is recorded at Channel Recording in Los Angeles, CA from December 1985 – April 1986. After the massive whirlwind success of the “Like A Virgin” album and “The Virgin Tour”, the pop superstar does not rest on her laurels, beginning work on the crucial follow up at the end of 1985. Working with long time collaborator Stephen Bray and new producer Patrick Leonard (Michael Jackson, Jody Watley), the album is praised upon its release as her strongest effort to date, and is widely regarded today as one of the best albums of her career. It spins off five top five hits including “Live To Tell” (#1 Pop), “Papa Don’t Preach” (#1 Pop), “Open Your Heart” (#1 Pop) and the title track (#3 Pop). “True Blue” also marks the beginning Madonna’s long association with famed fashion photographer Herb Ritts who shoots the LP’s iconic cover photo. The original LP package also includes a poster of the album cover shot. As a promotion for the album, MTV sponsors the “Make My Video” contest, inviting viewers to submit their own visual interpretations of the title track. The winning entry comes from Angel Gracia and Cliff Guest, whose black & white clip is rotated heavily on the video channel. The pair are awarded a check for $25,000 by the pop superstar herself at MTV’s New York studios. The alternate video directed by James Foley, featuring Madonna with close friends actress Debi Mazur and fashion designer Erika Belle is shown largely outside the US. Madonna also supports the album with the worldwide “Who’s That Girl Tour” beginning in June of 1987. It is remastered and reissued on CD in 2001, with the extended 12″ mixes of “La Isla Bonita” and the title track included as bonus tracks. The vinyl LP is reissued in Europe in 2012, including the original inner sleeve lyric sheet and poster featured in the original release. In October of 2016, a limited edition release of the LP pressed on blue vinyl, is issued as exclusive through the European supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. “True Blue” spends five weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified 7x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.

I mean, the whole album is bangin’ and deserves to be played at 1 am disco-packed-with-big-sweaty-menz volume, but the title track especially moves me. It’s one of those songs that when it comes on I have to stop what I’m doing, crank the volume to angelic heaven-is-a-disco, make your ears bleed volume and DANCE. La Isla Bonita is a close second in that category.

My unbridled love for this album and the accompanying quest to acquire it on “true blue” vinyl has been well documented on this blog, so I won’t add anything more and instead will sign off and go listen to it.

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Afternoon Soundtrack

George Michael – Listen Without Prejudice (1990)

George Michael – Patience (2004)

Both are severely underrated albums.

When I think of George Michael, I think of Faith (1987) and him getting busted in a Los Angeles park toilet. Sorry, but that’s where my mind goes (and the number of times I narrowly avoided a similar fate as a young man – DON’T ACT ALL SHOCKED AND SURPRISED, I never claimed to be an angel).

Faith is one of my go-to high fidelity recordings. By that I mean the recording itself—along with the performance—is the type of disc I would take to an audio salon to audition equipment. It’s intimate. It’s expansive. You can almost hear every breath as he sings.

But I realized today that his 1990 followup, Listen Without Prejudice shares many of those qualities. I find myself just getting lost in Cowboys and Angels. As we used to say, it just plays me.

Patience (2004) feels different from the other two, but it stands proudly on its own right—and retains the impeccable sonic qualities of its brethren. Amazing and Flawless (Go To The City) are two cuts that make we want to get up off my tired, sagging ass and dance.

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I’m Such A Geek

What audio geek does not appreciate some nekkid pix?

I want to say that getting the top cover off was the hardest point, but getting it back on was much, much worse. More than once the fiddly bits that keep it locked in place went flying when I was trying to get them back in. Thankfully I found them each time.

Curiosity almost killed the cat.

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