CD player skipping - any suggestions

[Phil Meloy]

My CD player has all of a sudden started to skip. The problem is with the player not the CDs - its doing it on a range of CDs all of which are normal pre-recorded commercially manufactured CDs which are clean and in good condition. It doesn't do it on every CD but on quite a few and I think the problem is increasing. The player is a fairly good quality Technics which I suppose is about five or six years old. It may just need some kind of cleaning disc played through it but I don't know much about them. Any suggestions?

[peter rh]

could be a vibration problem - how stable are the feet ?
can you try blutack or similar under feet or a different surface?
does the skipping occur only at beginning of cd play or throughout
play?

[Phil Meloy]

Don't think stability is the problem Pete. CD sits on top of a tape deck, on top of a very heavy wooden desk. The floor of the room is concrete. Also it's been in the same position for the last five or six years and has never happened before. I'll check it out anyway. The skipping re-occurs right throughout the CD at various random points. Thanks for taking the time to reply Pete.

[DustyFoot]

I am no technical expert but I will relate my own personal experiences with skipping CD players. This has happened to me several times in the past and in each case it had to do with the tracking mechanism getting dirty and dusty and therefore not gliding smoothly back and forth (the dirt would make the laser "arm" catch as it moved along the mechanism).

In each case, I took my CD player to a repair shop and each time the cost of doing this was about 50% of what I paid for the CD player in the first place. As you might suspect, I am only willing to do this once or twice before I then decide to go out and buy myself a new CD player!

So, this would be my advice: if you are handy with electronics, open up your player and clean the tracking mechanism yourself. Otherwise, you will need to take it to a repair shop. Perhaps labour rates for this type of work are not as high as they are here in Canada, so you will have to determine for yourself if it's worth it to spend the $$$ on the repair or on a new player. It's the same sort of question as with running an old car - do you want to sink your money into continuously maintaining an old vehicle, or put it toward payments on a new one?

You might want to get some other opinions too as this was just my experience, but it happened several times and if your CD player is 5 or 6 years old that is ample time for it to have built up some substantial dirt and grime that could affect its performance. If it's a good quality Technics then you may want to repair it and hold onto it. My opinion of newer players (the affordable ones anyway) are that they are pretty much disposable.

Good luck!!!

[Phil Meloy]

Thanks Dustyfoot - that all sounds like pretty sensible advice.

[Tenorman]

Agree with Dusty on this. I have had the same problem twice with Marantz decks and yes the costs of repair were horrendous. In each case the deck was around 6 or 7 years old. I found that the lighter the disc the more likely it was to skip. I tried cleaning discs which I use anyway around every 3 months or so, but they did not resolve the problem. The number of discs it fails on gradually increases. Went off Marantz and on to Music Fidelity A3.2 deck which is approaching a year and a half old. Come back in 6 years and we will see how reliable that one is

PS the first Marantz deck acquired the same failure 3 years down the line, so if my experience is anything to go by, do not expect the repair to last as long as the original

[Bev Stapleton]

I've had similar problems in the past. I had a player about 10 years ago that started skipping.

Now I live in Worksop and I bought it in Nottingham (30 miles south). When I contacted the shop they said it would have to go to Leicester (another 25 miles further south) for repair! So I lost it for a month!

When I got it back it kept skipping. So I phoned the repair shop. They sent an engineer 50 miles north; who took it away for another month! When I got it back (I drove to Leicester to speed up the process) it worked for a few months...and then started skipping again.

I recall the repair being very costly too.

So I'd suggest accepting that your CD player is ready to go to Hi-Fi heaven and buy a new one!

*********

I'm having a bizarre problem with my car CD. For the last few months it just won't play most of the time...until about 20 minutes into a journey. It makes a brave attempt to play the disc and then spits it out! Yet at other times it starts instantly.

Yet if I try and get it to play with the engine turned off....instant success! Plays every time!

Seems to have nothing to do with the particular disc being played!

I'm assuming its due to the cold temperature or moisture at the moment. Or fear of my driving!

Weird!

[Phil Meloy]

Thanks Ian and Bev - funny thing is guys that I went home last night and played two CDs on the machine. Both played perfectly - one of the CDs was one that was previously skipping. A couple of days ago everything I tried to play would skip. I didn't have time to play any more last night but I'll be able to check it out more over the weekend. This all started last Saturday when I tried to play two brand new CDs that had come in the post that morning. I'd never had the slightest problem before that. My normal experience of things breaking down is as you said Ian of something gradually deteriorating due to wear over a period of time or a sudden problem occuring due to a serious failure of some piece of the mechanism causing a permanent failure of the equipment. This situation is a bit odd in that it was quite sudden but now the machine seems to be fine. Anyway I'll monitor it over the weekend and see what happens. The one thing I'm sure I'm not going to do is mess around with costly repairs.

BTW Bev remind me never to accept a lift of you.

[Tenorman]

Phil,
I mentioned this thread in the office today, and one of the guys said that he had had an 8 or 9 year old CD player which started acting up. Since it was a fairly cheap job he took the cover off it and tried running it. He spotted that the "elastic band" which ran the spindle which spun the disc was slipping. He found a screw that enabled him to increase the tension on the band and he kept his player going for another couple of years.

Since yours is out of guarantee, it might be worth a try.

PS watch out for the laser when you take the cover off - it is not worth losing an eye!

[Phil Meloy]

Hi guys - CD was skipping again on Saturday so I went down to a hi-fi components place about a mile away in Clapham Junction. I'm fortunate in that nearby there's a proper hi-fi shop which is a family business and has been there for decades - a real Aladdin's cave of new and used hi-fi equipment and parts. They suggested I first try a cleaning disc because the problem could be a deposit build-up on the laser lens but if that didn't work then the laser was probably on the way out and would either require repair or replacement of the machine. I purchased a TDK cleaning disc for £7.50 and took it home and ran it through the machine (the cleaning process takes a few seconds) with the result that the CD hasn't skipped since (I've played about 20 CDs since) - in fact I think there's actually been a bit of improvement in sound quality too. The instructions on the disc recommend running the cleaning disc in the player every month but the need for this would obviously depend on usage level. The cleaning disc is supposed to be good for 50 cleans.

[Blooeyz2001]

Hi. I stumbled onto this interesting thread today. I have a JVC CD player that is about 10 yrs. old which skips from time to time (mainly at the beginning of CD's when it's acting up). I use two types of cleaners. One is a "Maxell CD Laser Lens Cleaner". I use this for light cleaning of the lens. It has one brush on the disc. I also use a "Magic CD/VCD Twin Brushes Lens Cleaner". This one is a wet cleaner. It has two brushes on the disc. You put a drop of cleaning fluid on one brush before inserting in the player. I use this one when the dry one doesn't do the trick. (Hope this helps others having this dilemma).

[Phil Meloy]

Since my previous post last February my CD player has essentially been operating fine although on a number of occassions it has begun to skip again. Each time I have used the cleaner disc and the problem has been corrected. What I have now noticed over the past few months however is that it only seems to occur when I play a new CD that has just been delivered through the post. Most of the ones I buy come from the USA to the UK. Also now I come to think the problem only emerged last January when I played a CD that had just arrived in the post.This may be complete nonsense but could these CDs have picked up some kind of electrical charge (or something?) in the post from a scanner or some such device which is interfering with the CD player? After I play them once they don't seem to skip again. Has anyone experienced this problem with new CDs? Perhaps my player is worn and a bit over sensitive anyway. Like I said it's not a great problem as the cleaner disc seems to work.

[Tenorman]

Just a thought Phil

If you can bear to do it; let the CD lie in the house for 24 hours, before playing it. It could be temperature differences and misting of the playing surface.

[Fran]

You had the logical answer in your first post. I can't understand why all these complex discussions. My players have started skipping at times, over the years, and I figured, "Maybe the head needs cleaning" It's always worked. A $15.00 investment and 2 minutes of time and you're back in business. My local shop clued me no charge the first time.

[albright22]

The problem i am haveing is when my subs are hitting low notes my cd player is skipping i have put things around the cage of the deck and that has fixed it but i recently upgraded. I am now somewheres in the mid 140db on the newest mic. i am wondering what some of you guys have found to work to fix fix this problem. Thx

[Ornate Coalman]

Remove skipping rope?

[rogman]

I thought I'd throw in an engineer's perspective on this...
As others have mentioned, CD skipping can be caused by dirty CDs, a dirty lens, or a dirty tracking mechanism, all of which can be remedied by cleaning. And yes external vibration can be a cause too. But if the skipping problem persists after you have eliminated these factors, and your player is over 5 years old, then it's probably caused by the tracking mechanism losing precision due to wear. Another less common cause is the spindle can get sloppy but this usually only happens if you have been playing a lot of unbalanced CDs (eg some public libraries stick bar codes or security tags on them, which can cause internal vibaration that accelerates wear). If you have the player 'repaired' they will typically just clean the lens and clean and re-grease the mechanism, which may take up the slack in the mechanism for a while until the grease works its way out. The tracking mechanisms are typically not replaceable so it's time for a new player. In my experience even the best quality players are only good for about 5 years of heavy use - I'm on my third.