I’ve been having problems with my portable cd player (PCDP) skipping alot in the first track of a CD with it just sitting on a flat surface without being bumped at all. This happens to CD players as they age because the laser loses its brightness over time and the tracking may also lose its accuracy over time. So, the following is how you can fix your aging PCDP so that it will be like the day you bought it.

First, a quick story which I will title: I’m such an IDIOT! GOSH!!!
I finished fixing my player and it was like brand new. So, I stand up to get a screw driver to close it up. Suddenly, I felt a tug on the headphones that I had forgotten were still on my head. In that instant, I knew it was all over. The player fell and the essential ribbon connection ripped in half, killing the CD player instantly. Within moments of my glorious do-it-yourself repair, I had completely killed my player. So, don’t do what I did. Protect the ribbon at all costs.

***Disclaimer! I am not a PCDP repair person so I take no responsibilty for screwing up your player if what I suggest somehow messes up your player. In fact, what I say below could be completely false because I don’t have any sort of repair manual. I just did good ‘ole fashioned trial and error to fix my player. In other words, I take no responsibility for anything of any kind other than reporting on my own adventure fixing my player. If you choose to do the same thing, then that is your perogative. Anyway, on with the show…

This repair applies to the Sony D838 portable cd player but it can probably be applied to many other PDCP’s because they all work on the same principles.

1. Remove all the screws on the bottom. There are 7 total with an arrow next to each one. Some are in there really tight so it’ll take a good amount of force to remove some of them. There are no hidden screws to worry about.
2. Once the screws are out, flip the player over and lift up the top half. There are no stupid tabs that click it locked. Just lift up straight and the top of the whole thing will come off.
3. 
   In the above picture I show how I tested the results of the tweaking (to be described later). Sorry about the shallow depth of field but there wasn’t much light to work with. On the left, I am holding a screw driver to press down the switch that tells the player the cover is closed. This is so you can play the CD. I also have the player hooked up to an AC power supply (although you could probably use batteries) and headphones (so I can hear if it skips).
4. 
   The above picture is a top down view of the open casing. The red box shows the area of interest. There is no CD in the player because it will block two of the potentiometers at least one of which we will need to adjust.
5. 
   The above picture is a close up of the red box shown in the prior picture. A, B, C, and D mark the potentiometers (pots). I’m not completely certain what the potentiometers control but here is my best guess:
   A - controls the strength of the laser
   B - controls the tracking on one side
   C - controls the tracking on the other side
   D - controls the speed of the motor that spins the CD
6. I found that adjusting the potentiometers (pots) in alphabetical order was easiest. Pot D typically should not need to be adjusted because it controls the speed of the motor that spins the CD. But, hey, I don’t have your CD player so you may need to adjust it. If so, I would adjust D first because tracking and laser strength don’t matter if the CD is spinning at the correct speed. Anyway, assuming your not adjusting D, potentiometer (pot) A should be adjusted first because that is the primary cause of the skipping. I need to boost the power of the laser. So, I started with quarter turn in a clockwise direction and then adjusted in tiny increments. Before proceding with the other pots I’ll describe my testing procedures.
7. Once you have your adjustment, pop in a CD, hold down the cover switch and hit play. I used a CD was that particuarly problematic in that it was skipping a few times a second on the first track. As you make your adjustments, you should notice that the skips will reduce (eventually to nothing ideally). Also, turn off the skip protection because that will hide the fact that it has skipped. While it was playing i also tested it by hitting it on the side a bit to see how resistant it was to skipping.
8. Aftering adjusting pot A, I had my player down to 2 or 3 skips in the first 10 seconds on the problematic CD and 0 skips on a non-problematic CD. Not perfect, but still much better. Of course, your mileage my vary. So, now I adjusted B and C.
9. I adjusted B in a clockwise direction. This time I used extremely small turns because it was very sensitive. I got it down to an average of 1 skip in the first 10 seconds. At this time, its important to note that your testing will go faster because you don’t have to pull the CD out to get access to the pot. This does not mean you can adjust the pot while it is playing though! Doing so tends to just mess up the player. With each adjustment, you must hit Stop so that the laser resets and parks and then hit play. Some of the trials might also be random flukes so if you suddenly get a jump from 1 skip to 3-5 skips per 10 seconds just run the trial again to make sure.
10. Finally, I adjusted C but in a counter-clockwise direction. Again, I used extremely small turns and made sure to the hit Stop and Play for each test trial. At this point your player should be like the day you bought it.
11. A word of caution! E marks the ribbon that connects the main board to the laser/motor mechanism. This ribbon is very delicate so don’t put any strains on it. I will reference my story at the top for the unbelievers.

And that’s it. Questions? Leave a comment. I turned off unregistered comments because of comment spam so I will approve each user and comment as it comes in (if any). Yay, I have contributed to the greater knowledge of the internet.