Two CED players
 

I picked up these two CED players at the WARCI swap meet last weekend. The first is a Sears from 1981. Replacing the two belts got it working. I recently bought a box of VCR belt kits off of ebay, and while there turned out to be no belt kits in there I actually needed for any of my VCRs, I found belts that worked in this CED player looking through them. You can see my cat Moppet helping me fix it in one of the pictures.

The other is an RCA VJT400. The outer case was covered in dirt, and all the screws to screw in the top and bottom were missing, so I expected it to be all dirty inside and missing parts. But it looks clean inside, and doesn't seem to be obviously missing anything. The belt in the disc loading mechanism has turned to goo. I'm about to clean it out now and see if I have a new one that will work in this player too. The looks like a deluxe model, it uses a remote control (which I don't have), and has stereo sound (not that I have a tv with stereo sound:D).

Nice?

I put a good belt in that SJT400, but that's far from all that's wrong with it. After monkeying around with it for a while I got it to load a disc, but it won't play, it won't unload the disc either.

It would have been nice to get this later model one working, but at least I got one working player. And I finally got around to ordering the turntable belt I need for my SFT100, so I should have 2 working players soon.

If the RCA is an interactive player I'd be interested in owning it.

It's this one, SJT400X: http://www.cedmagic.com/museum/ced-p...e/sjt400x.html

I put a good belt in there, but something still isn't right with the loading mechanism. And none of the controls in the front (other than the power button) do anything at all (might be just a loose cable, but I don't know that for sure).

Swap me another CED player for it?

...

Where is a good source for discs? They're not something that comes up often in thrift stores, and ebay prices seem high for anything I actually want to watch. The only playable disc I have right now is Star Trek I, and while I like Star Trek 1, I've already watched it twice since I fixed that Sears.

I like the Sears better than the SFT100 because of the direct drive turntable.

I replaced the turntable belt in the SFT100 and the color sync problem instead of going away, became permanent instead of intermittent. But I found that if I put a finger under the turntable as it spins, and if I apply just the right amount of pressure to slow it down just a little, my color troubles go away. So why would it be spinning too fast?

I'm also going to have to replace the belt that goes to the motor that moves the arm with the stylus too, it was working but just started slipping.

The thrift I usually haunt, had a stack of them on the shelf for quite a while. I was thinking about buying a couple, but the only titles they had was like "The Sound of Music" and other similar titles.
Someone came in and bought them all.
Haven't seen any since.

I once had a stack that was nearly 5' tall, and almost all of them were given to me by the same guy. In a moment of weakness I passed on all the discs and the pair of players I had to another collector. Discs do show up, sometimes in quantity.

I saw a few in a thrift store several months ago mixed in with the records, but nothing I actually wanted to watch. Now I wish I had picked up at least one of them to use as a test disc, having ruined one of my 2 discs while messing around with it in that SJT400.

I ordered that other belt for the SFT100. I'm going to wait until it gets here before I do anything else to it.

Remind me after the ETF when I have time to evaluate which of my remaining 3 I'd part with.


Test discs are important...It is not hard to ruin a disc.

Of course if you have skipping you can fix it by playing the hell out of the disc using visual search to repeat skipping sections till they improve...My copys of Monty Python's Holy Grail and Fast Times at Ridgemont High started out where it was hard to follow any dialogue through the skips, and are now fairly watchable.

Ok, sounds good, I'll trade away that SJT400 for another player.

I put in the belt that attaches to the motor that eventually moves the mechanism with the stylus in it in the SFT100. It was so tight a fit, that even though it wasn't slipping nothing was moving at all. I made sure the motor was functioning with no belt attached, then made sure everything else was moving freely, and lubricated if it needed to be. Then I tried to stretch out the belt a bit. It works now mostly, but still gets stuck up sometimes.

Adjusting the angle of the platform the turntable motor sits on allowed me to adjust the speed enough to fix the color troubles. So now I'm watching Star Trek I again, on this player.

Good luck Adam :)

I would love getting a MONO player!!!!!!!!

Might be leaky caps in the motor's servo circuit. Wouldn't cost much to see.
When caps get leaky...speeds go wonky and usually too fast.