Well, last week my CD 50 started spitting CDs back out at me.  I close the drive, it pauses for a couple seconds, then opens it again.  I just searched around on here and got a whiff of what seemed to be maintenance issues with this old CD players, but didn't see anything concrete.  Anyone have any suggestions?

 Luckily, I just picked up a Sony STR-6800SD receiver... the Beosystem 5500 was pretty seriously underpowering my Energy Pro Series 4.5 speakers, and I was getting paranoid about even medium-volume (e.g. 3.6) clipping issues.  Hopefully this CD issue isn't terribly serious, and I can get a nice little pair of bookshelf speakers for it instead....

Thanks, 

greg

P.S. yes I am still putting the CD in upside-down, thanks...:p

The first thing I usually do is grab a Q-tip and 99% alcohol to give the lens a clean.  Have you tried this? 

 On pretty much all philips drives there is a capacitor (usually 33uF 16v) that is part of the laser supply.  When it dies, and it does, the player will not read anymore.

Those are the 2 most common things I can think of.

My CD50 is a bit temperamental and refused to read CDs at all for a day or two , but improved greatly when I used a head-cleaning CD on it. Was this problem out of the blue? Mine had been failing to read the first minute or so of CD's for a few days.especially on 70-80 min CD's, but now the heads are clean it works perfectly 90% of the time.

Simon

The laser lens is facing downwards in the Beogram CD50 so dust accumulating
on the lens is not an issue unless the player has been stored upside down.

The CD50 is nothing like any other B&O CD decks, the laser control included.
Actually the laser current control and the laser itself is a very robust build.
I only ever saw one faulty laser block in a CD50 and it was physically
destroyed by an authorized repairshop in a desperate attempt to cure the fault,
you also experience. Looks like the laser is at fault, cannot find the focus point
but it's not so !

The capacitors on the servo board could be marginal but even this will probably
not be the problem here.
The problem that every Beogram CD 50 will face sooner or later is that of the
spindle motor lubricants drying and hardening.
The spindle motor is of the brushless bell anchor type, you can rotate the
motor by rotating the housing.
If you spin the motor gently by hand, it will spin freely - just not freely enough.
The motor will need to be dismounted from the player and pressed apart.
The housing contains magnets and is very brittle so let someone do it who
has done it before. It then needs a good cleaning off the old lubricants and
adding fresh.
There's a couple of teflon washers too, some at the outside and some inside.
Note how many and which ones goes where.
Also note the exact position of the CD clamp on the motor shaft.
There's a measurement in the service manual but it won't fit all machines.

The problematic first minute is a known factory fault on some machines.
B&O introduced a fix for this at some point. Cleaning alone won't cure it.

Martin

...owch.  Doesn't sound good, huh?  Seems pretty complicated.  The odds of finding anyone who's done this before, in Halifax (let alone Canada!), don't seem good to me.

 greg

I have fixed loads of CD mechanisms.  Not sure which one is in the CD-50

Edit:  Just downloaded the service manual.  Is that a Hitachi laser??  Hard to tell.  I am surprised they didn't use a philips drive.  Wow... I'd love to see one.  In any case, looks like a cleaning and lube is still in order.  On a 3 beam pickup though, I'd want to measure the laser power.

Marc

I don't know if there's any "classic B&O" repair people in my area of Canada (or even within Canada for that matter, haha!), but I'm going to call an audio-repair place here in Halifax tomorrow.  I'm hoping that they'll be positive about taking a look at it; I don't have the time, the tools, the skill, or the experience to take on such a job at the moment.

 The Sony STR-6800 I've just picked up has some niggling problems as well (doesn't seem to hold onto an FM signal, which I don't really care about, and volume control knob has a little bit of noise, nothing serious I think), so it actually might work out relatively conveniently.

 In the meantime, I'm going to get a CD cleaner and give it a try, just in case.  Can't hurt I suppose! 

 greg

Well, the verdict is out on the CD 50; hopefully a good cleaning will clear things up (please please please!), but it'll be a few weeks before I find out either way. 

 In other news, my "new" Sony STR-6800SD receiver finally got hooked up to my Energy Pro 4.5s, and even through a cheap old Sony CDP-C305 CD player it sounds phenomenal.  I'm pretty blown away by how well it makes these speakers sing compared to the Beomaster 5000… as well it should of course, but it's clear the B&O system really needs a nice little pair of bookshelf speakers!  (On another note, I just agreed to buy a beautiful old pair of Energy ESM-3s in a neighbouring town, and while I was still working out when I was going to pick them up, someone came by and bought them on the spot!  DAMN!   )

 But out of mild curiousity, is there any way to hook the Beogram 5005 up to an amp that ISN'T the Beomaster?  I mean, the inputs are pretty proprietary, so I assume it would mean a bit of work if it is possible.  But can this be done?  Is it worth it?  It just came into my head now, but this Sony amp apparently has great phono pre-amp, and I'd hate to have to buy a Rega just to try it out....  :D

 greg

Hi,

I had the same problem with my cd50 I bought on ebay and I did try the lens cleaning, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

Somehow in transport the spring that closes the front panel of the cd drawer moved or got too tight and each time the door closed it also pushed the contact on the left edge of the cd door panel that opens the cd drawer again.

.... seems stupid I know but even b&o techs couldn't figure than one out....very frustrating

A regular cornershop electronics repairs guy spotted it in 1 minuts. One new spring and the prob was solved.

The CD50 is pretty indistructable appearantly and the laser tested out more than ok after all this time. I use mine almost daily.

I'm from montreal and there are at least 2 places that I know that do B&O repairs. Hope it is of some help to you

Thanks a lot!  I'll be taking it to a (I think THE, haha) local audio repair shop this upcoming week.  Apparently they've worked on a few B&O systems so he said he's got a little familiarity with them.  I'll let him know your suggestion about the CD drawer spring… hopefully that's the problem!

 Unfortunately I no longer have the manuals… I got a membership last year to download them, but I didn't renew it – and now it seems that I've somehow deleted those copies.  Stupid. 

greg