YBA CD3 with Sanyo SF-P1 lens tracking problem : Please help.

At that price I would, but I need the 12 pin version (2 x 6 pins). Can't seem to find it on their site and anywhere else I search it is quite pricey. Sigh...

They say it's a Sanyo SF-P1 and that it's a "blue laser" which I believe is a dvd laser.
If you search this page for SF-P1, there's quite a few that used them, you may find a used cheap player on ebay that used it.

CD-Player-DAC-Transport List

Cheers George
 
Thanks George!

The lens was used in older CEC, Krell, YBA, Classe, Audio Alchemy and so on models. I did look at the list before but because you supplied a link, I took another look. I don't know why I missed this before, but looks like in all cases there might be 2 interchangeable lenses. SF-P1 / SF90. I have come across a lot of the SF90's at much more reasonable pricing. If they are compatible, I'm good to go! Posting that link really helped!

Hi Bergui45. That diode at D116 is missing completely on my circuit board. Only a burnt spot in its place. Not sure what the previous owner had done, but everything had been working fine for about 10 years since my purchase. Though the display has pretty much disappeared. I think the diode has something to do with the display. I'll have to poke around see what workaround was done in removing the diode. It may have been moved elsewhere on the board.

Latest update is that the player has been working intermittently. So I am going to re-heat all the solder joints and if that fails now at least can look at a more reasonably priced SF-90 lens.

Thanks Everyone!
 
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Sorry, long post follows:

My Roksan again stopped playing a few weeks ago. I stripped it down pretty good and checked all the caps and resistors. Took apart and cleaned any connections. Even the the button panels and contacts therein. Touched up a few solder joints that looked wonky. Didn't help. Hard "shooting in the dark" without a schematic, and I'm not that technically savvy anyways. Still, I do have a DVM and it would be nice to check what I can.

Finally decided to order a SF90 laser head with 12 pin connectors (2 x 6) which hopefully will be the equivalent of the current SF-P1, as both are shown for this model on the CD Player list. So waiting for that to arrive.

Of course I couldn't leave well enough alone. Took apart the FL display to see if I can get that working just by cleaning contacts or at least to obtain the part number. Display still dim, but at least I have the part number. Which is scarce, but I can watch for other CD players that have the same one. Just missed a Rotel sold cheap for parts, display working, but drawer wasn't. Figures. I can live with a dim display.

Now that I had everything apart again, I thought I would watch what happens to the laser assembly when I hit eject or play when loading a disc. It slides back and forth as it should, but not up and down. I tried turning the power switch on the back of the unit off and on, while keeping an eye on the laser assembly. Well, it does move up and down when I toggle the power switch. Interesting. But when power is on and I toggle the eject, the drawer opens and closes, the laser will slide of course because of the gears, but the laser doesn't move up and down at all. So only when toggling the power switch.

So I repeated this power off/on, load/eject several times trying to see if I could spot something or get everything to temporarily work again. My bad. I think I did this so many times, now the drawer stopped ejecting and loading. Positive side, I didn't smell anything burning, and maybe I finally totally blew something that was causing the intermittent problems. Eureka, it's probably the tray motor. And the IC104 did get burning hot as was mentioned in an earlier post if the motor may be defective.

So I was able to order a replacement tray motor and got a spindle motor at the same time. Just in case.

Motors arrived. Before I swapped motors, I thought I would power things up just to see. Well the original motor fired up. (Note, at this point everything is apart, the belt removed, and the motor is set aside with the wires connecting. So it did it's thing which I assume is normal. It ran for a bit in one direction. Then reversed and ran in the other direction, than stopped. OK. Well I have the new motor anyways, so swapped them out. Now the new motor didn't work. Just my luck. Hooked up the old one, and it didn't work either. Hmmmm.

So I've complicated things.

Maybe this is still all connected in some way to the laser. I guess I'll wait and see, but the part won't arrive for likely another month or so. Might just poke around some more.

I'm stubborn that way, though learn from trial and error. Really interesting to take things apart and see how they work. Especially in a CD Player where mechanics and electrical are mixed together.

I'll likely check everything over again, including the fuses, which I forgot to mention was the first place I checked when the motor stopped. Everything fine there.

As fun as this is, I am getting really close to giving up on this. Some temptations on the used market of older solid built players. But they are as old as mine. And the prices for them are going up instead of down. Keeping an eye on the newer "transports only" like the Cambridge CXC. Unfortunately I don't know how it would compare as a home trial is not an option.

Thanks for reading. Any suggestions I might try, until my laser arrives, regarding the tray motor would be appreciated.

Cheers!
 
The Blob vs Steve McQueen

Received the SF-90 laser which looks identical to my current SF-P1 laser. Upon further reading I did find that indeed they are interchangeable. We'll see.

However, before I swap them out, for the life of me I cannot find the protective anti-static solder blob that is supposed to be removed once the laser has been replaced.

If there was a blob on the replacement part, then it has already been removed.

BUT I am suspicious of what could possibly be a shorting screw seen going through the PCB copper trace circle in the SF-90 (bottom picture). The top picture (my current SF-P1), the screw has been moved up to a secondary location, with no copper trace.

Could this be what is being used instead of the solder blob?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I did get my tray motor working, so almost there...
 

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I can't see any shorting link on those pickups.

As the laser diode is driven directly from on board circuitry it is possible that it is deemed not necessary as the drive chip will provide a low impedance across the diode and protect it.

The screw seems to be located on the 'ground' trace of the circuitry and I expect it simply connects the PCB to the pickup body. Definitely nothing to do with diode protection.
 
Ah. That makes sense. The pick-up body is all metal on the SF-90, whereas on the SF-P1 it is not. So the screws in different positions likely relate to that. Any pics of either I see on the net show the screws as aforementioned.

So next step for me is to install the SF-90. Looking at it I'm starting to wish I paid extra for it to come with cables already attached. Steady as she goes, 1 wire at a time.

Thanks for your help on this.
 
Swapped out laser pick-up. Unsoldering a dozen 24 gauge wires from old to new went really well. Unfortunately problem still persists. If/when a disc spins it either goes hyper speed, or not at all. Then the only way to get it to stop is to power down. Then it won't start up again or eject unless I unplug the unit and let it sit for a bit. With the cover off I can manually eject the tray so long as the unit is powered right off. Otherwise the the tray motor pretty much puts up a fight trying to maintain its end of travel position.

I did buy replacement motors for tray and spindle, but I'm a little nervous removing the old pulleys and placing onto the new motors. I'm just going to let it sit while I recoup.

Trial and error can be tedious. But over the years I've had more positive results than bad. Oh what a feeling.


Cheers!
 
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Just quickly re-reading it all from the start... and I'd go back to my view in post #25 that there is other stuff going on rather than a faulty pickup.

Small DC motors can be gauged by simply applying a 1.5v battery across the terminals (motor isolated electrically and mechanically) and they should spin up freely with very low current draw. If loaded with a finger then the torque should be smooth and with no tendency toward dead spots.
 
I changed out the tray motor. No change. I have the platter motor to do, but will leave that for another time. Like when I'm retired, which hopefully will be 6 months or so. Ordered myself a Audio Lab 6000CDT transport for the meantime. Been using my laptop into my dac as well. Not too shabby. Enough to know will eventually look at some sort of server streamer.

Thanks all for your help.
 
CEC TL-1 head laser offset

Hi guys,
My CEC TL-1 was showing signs of fatigue. After a brief diagnosis I found that the gears in the laser head mechanism are worn. I bought all these parts from the CEC representance from Japan. With this intervention I changed the Sanyo SF-90 laser head with a new one, it gave reading errors. At the first attempt and at the others he reads the tracks on the CD very hard. I have to start several times before reading once. I play the first track and it counts up to 24 seconds and stops. The next track doesn't read anymore. From a mechanical point of view, I think it works well, the laser head travels from one side to the other. Does anyone know how to make adjustments to the laser head? I guess it has to be made from the semi-adjustable on the servo module. Does anyone have the service manual for the CEC TL-1 or at least the part with adjustment instructions for the laser head?
Thank you!
hotzman
 
Guys, I'm here from russian speaking audiophile community - to check your opinion: is it possible to buy genuine SANYO SF-P90/P91/P1 now days or everything, what's currently listed on ebay or few other stores are fake? I'm asking, cause in our community appears to be a strong stereotype, that there is no genuine P90 laser head on market now and it's literally no possible to find one elsewhere. I'm not quite sure about it, so decide to double check with you here)
Will be highly appreciated for any helpful information.
 
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Hi Elvis, good to have you back :)

I have SF-P101N (16 pins) that I bought from Japan some 10+ years ago. It was a spare for my Denon CD player, but I did not have to use it. It is brand new. I am not sure if you can use it... see the photo.
 

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Thanks a lot for you response and great proposition! Unfortunately I can't use this laser head, as I'm looking P90/P1 for my C.E.C. CD transport.
But I'm also curious about overall opinion of the diy comunity of this source, regarding the statement that all of the P90 laser heads, currently present on market - are 100% fake.
Also that would be extremely helpful, if someone can share an information about the visual difference between genuine P90/P1 head and its fake copy.
Thank a lot for all participants, in advance!