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Good vintage CD player buys?

Reminds me of when I sold my BSA bantam many years ago for £450
I had a knob phone me up and on hearing it was sold, proceed to lecture me that I had undersold it, and should have asked £750 for it.
I told him I had a mate with an identical bike who would be happy to sell it to him for (the silly price of) £750 ( it was true...my mate did have one the same)
Funny enough the bloke started back tracking and then hung up...
 
Seeker_UK said:
The 206 / 207 mechanism works fine (a lovely piece of swing-arm engineering) but won't play anything outside Red book standard. Any CD longer than 65 minutes and it will struggle.
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Hmm. I have a Meridian 206 Delta Sigma that I love and I have just checked what you have stated above.

Roxy Music - Street Life (74 mins) and The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss me (72 mins). No problems playing these discs at all. Put in 2 CDRs for good measure. No problems. Maybe your laser alignment needed checking.

I think these player are very well built.
 
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badlyread said:
Hmm. I have a Meridian 206 Delta Sigma that I love and I have just checked what you have stated above.

Roxy Music - Street Life (74 mins) and The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss me (72 mins). No problems playing these discs at all. Put in 2 CDRs for good measure. No problems. Maybe your laser alignment needed checking.

I think these player are very well built.
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OK. Maybe I had a duff one.

Anyway, it meant I ended up with a 500 / 518 / 568 instead, so it worked out alright in the end. :)
 
If you push your budget a tad, there's a Naim CDi for £650 in the classifieds.

I'm sorely tempted to get it to see how it compares to my CDX/XPS!

Stephen
 
If going down the vintage Naim CD route then I would only seriously consider the CDS and first iteration CDI. Both of these use the classic 16 bit TDA1541 chipset, and have bullet-proof CDM4 laser assemblies that are in plentiful supply from donor players if required. The CD2 and 3 are worth it if you have a spare NOS CDM9 laser for them. These are extremely rare now. The 3.5 and CDX use a VAM1205 transport that's prone to failure. Although spares are available it's a lottery as to whether they work reliably or not.
 
MJS said:
If going down the vintage Naim CD route then I would only seriously consider the CDS and first iteration CDI. Both of these use the classic 16 bit TDA1541 chipset, and have bullet-proof CDM4 laser assemblies that are in plentiful supply from donor players if required. The CD2 and 3 are worth it if you have a spare NOS CDM9 laser for them. These are extremely rare now. The 3.5 and CDX use a VAM1205 transport that's prone to failure. Although spares are available it's a lottery as to whether they work reliably or not.
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Completely agree. - I have 2 cdm9 based CDIs…and 4 donor machines with cdm9s in the cellar :)
 
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If you're serious about build quality then the obvious route is to go Japanese. The TOTL players built in the later 80's and earl 90's from the likes of Sony and Denon and Marantz are pretty much peerless in terms of build quality. Loads of models to choose from.

There are two logical ways to go:

1) Buy a vintage player with a near bullet proof mech from the 'golden era', such as the Philips CDM-1 or Sony BU-1. Such mechs are on a different planet in terms of mechanical build quality to the disposable plastic junk that's available nowadays and they tend to last for absolutely ages. Models such as the Marantz CD-94 and Sony CDP-555esd stand out as being especially desirable.

2) Buy a player with a cheap and easily available laser (e.g. Sony KSS-210, KSS-240a etc). Models such as the Sony CDP-710 and Rotel RCD-971 etc.

There's an awkward middle ground are mechs like the CDM-9 and CDM-1 mk2, which are pretty good in terms of reliability but are now getting very hard to find.

As MJS above has suggested the CDM-4 is quite durable and there are plenty of donor players available should you need to replace it.

The Philips CDM-1 does go wrong but can almost always be brought back to top working order with some servicing and replacement of a a few small capacitors.

The CDM-0 is similar to the CDM-1 but struggles with CD discs that are outside the Redbook standards (long run time and CDR's etc).

As general rule vintage Sony mechs tend to be much better on CDR's and long run time discs that Philips. All my vintage Sony players read CDR discs very reliably.

Philips and Marantz players often need some recapping because of the awful blue coloured Philips axial electrolytics and also because of the glue that was often used to hold the caps in place has corroded some component legs/wire links. Sony and Denon players generally fair better as they used really durable caps that last for ages. I have yet to come across a Sony that has stopped working because of a failed cap.
 
Did any of you (the usual cd player suspects) pick up any of those boxed bu-1 x on ebay last month? German guy had a handful of them, strong money though.
 
Many thanks for the suggestions. Anything further up the Naim hierarchy than a CD3 is going to be out of budget.

Vintage Japanese makes perfect sense though I miss the quirky styling of some UK designs. Hmm - food for thought.
 
Gervais Cote said:
My favorite vintage is a classic Phillips or its British equivalent the Mission DAD 7000. Real vintage warm sound, built like a tank and lovely look IMO.
Other options are the Linn, the Mimik can be bought with spare change and play music in a great way.
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The Linn Genki can be had for little more than the Mimik, is easier to service and sounds quite a bit better.

Meridian CD players are excellent, I have a 507 and I like it more than a Genki and definitely more than a Mimik… they command the top end of the OPs budget for the lowest priced examples, but it puts in a genuine high end performance.
 
Mynamemynaim said:
Reminds me of when I sold my BSA bantam many years ago for £450
I had a knob phone me up and on hearing it was sold, proceed to lecture me that I had undersold it, and should have asked £750 for it.
I told him I had a mate with an identical bike who would be happy to sell it to him for (the silly price of) £750 ( it was true...my mate did have one the same)
Funny enough the bloke started back tracking and then hung up...
Click to expand...
I had a similar experience with a mint Rega P2, I put it on Gumtree and intended to list it here too, but no sooner I’d listed it, a mate decided he wanted it… I de-listed it as soon as possible but not before some utter nut-job had spotted it and wanted it… he was willing to bid over my asking price if I sold it to him, I blocked him after the third call.
 
Another vote for Meridian 5xx series, my 506.24 still does the biz.
Others of greater age are the Denon DCD1500ii which is still a stunning player if you can find a good one. The original Marantz CD75, may not age so well due to build quality but again excellent sound .
 
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