Pioneer PD-M701

Hello,
This is a 6 disc cd player that uses a cartridge. You insert the discs in the cartridge and load the cartridge in the player. After loading it it goes through each disc will not play and then stops. I hit play after that and it says no disc. I have tried cleaning the lens but no luck.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You,
Tony

 

Are you putting the CD's in label side down?? Try that. You didn't say if you got it used or not, but most of the cartridge typesI have seen take the CD label side down. Let me know if that helps.

 

Thanks Ken,
I have owned this player for 8 years. Yes your right, the labels have to face down. If you were to load only 3 discs in it and you insert the cartridge. Say you left the first slot empty it would try to load that first disc. Then it wouldn't see the disc and try to load the second disc. Thats
the way it acts with 6 dics in the cartridge. It goes to load can't see the disc and goes on to the next.
Thanks for your help.

 

I have worked on a few of these. The loading switch at the lower right hand bottom of the mechanism has failed. Without a schematic to realign the rack I highly doubt you will be able to repair this. It’s a real battle to work on. Sorry to say here is another throw away item. By the way, eight years is a very good run for this type material. Back when they made them a little better. I just had a Denon unit fail after 10 years of service. Going to miss it!

 

Thanks For the Reply,
The loading mechanism your talking about? If it were bad,
would I still be able to see and hear the discs loading from the cartridge. Is that the same mechanism your talking about or I don't understand.
Thanks for all your help
Tony

 

Yep, what you are hearing is it searching for the disc. Each table will load and is being counted but the switch that tell's it to load a disc and play it has failed. It could even be the optics. Does it TOC or read the table of contents of the disc. Does it say that disc one is there and it has 12 tracks? If so the optics are working. It could be several things, jumped time, but that is not likley because it loads each disc. It really is a toss up without being able to get into something like this. To be honest it's going to cost around $100 US to fix it. I really don't think I would.

 

I have worked on quite a few of these same type Pioneer Units and I must admit that this isn't the normal failure that occurs with the Cartridge type CD Players, although I've seen this too.
Based on the symptoms that you've given us... I must agree with bigmike and I am fairly certain that the optical assembly has failed and is not reading any CD's. It would probably cost more than it's worth for replacement of the optics assembly and labor. If you really want to keep it, call around for a phone estimate.

Good Luck manor631

 

I'm going to get a price on a new Pickup. If it's $30 or so I will try to replace it myself.
Is their anything special about replacing this pickup or special tools or alignment. I'm not a putz! I have built a few computers.
I guess I'm just trying to say I'm going to do it but should I know anything befor I do this.
Thanks
Tony

 

You need a good digital meter, a minimum 60 MHz oscilloscope and the schematic to do it right. You should be able to get the optics from MCM Electronics for around $40 to $50 w/S&H. You will have to take the old unit apart to get the numbers off the optic itself. Probably a Sony 110. But don’t go by the online model lookup at MCM. Pioneer may have changed optics mid stream to the 240. It is possible that you can put the new optics in and they will work right out of the box but being it’s an eight year old unit there is going to be drift in the focus servo and the voltage on the optic really needs to be checked. As they age the tolerance level will swing to the 5% level and may overdrive the new optic on start up. But for the money I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try, cheaper than replacing the whole unit…