Technic SL-XP700 Repair

Perfect working order - wow! I got my batteries here; https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/362016678819?hash=item5449e023a3:g:3IAAAOSwv0tVE~YX

 

Yes I received it in '91 '92 for Christmas from my parents and always take care of it as it was so expensive ! I'm really happy I can still use it 30 years later. Thank you for the link.

 

Good evening!

I am joining the party a little late. I just got the same player mentioned by the OP. I got it for free, and I didn't had the heart to use it as a parts donor. Apart from the broken plastics the rest is intact. It suffers a severe case of brittle ABS with a lot of fractures. But it is nothing a 3D printer cannot solve.

Now I am tackling the issue of getting the player to read the CDs. As always, @Jorge suggestion with the spindle being to low was spot on. I shimmed the disc with 3 paper shims (roughly 0.3 mm in total) and the CD stoped rubbing and started focusing. So now I am in the process of pulling the turntable ever so slightly to restore the original turntable height (a set of thickness gauges should arrive with the post tomorrow). I might however need to adjust the focus bias ever so slightly, and for that I need the service manual. This is however easier said than done. @randall977 I saw you got yourself a copy. Could you perhaps share a digital copy? I would really appreciate it.

 

Unreachable Torx screws. That sounds like a German car. Am I correct?

Regarding the player, pulling the turntable 0.2 mm helped with the rubbing and partially with the focus. The turntable has a little wobble, and as such the player focus only when the wobble brings the disc closer to the laser. The wobble itself is not that much, at least compared with other players in my collection, but it is enough to make the focus fail in some cases. I imagine that the focus bias is a tad off, hence the need of a manual.

But hey, the mid-frame surgery is partially completed and the player is partially functional. That's a win on my book. I'll post some pictures later.

 

So, I got a copy of the manual and proceeded to tune the focus bias. However, the potentiometer is doing little to improve the focus. Going well beyond the middle point on either side results in the CDs not being read at all. Returning it to the middle position allows the cd to be read after tipping it slightly (afterwards it works as expected). I tend to believe that the height of the turntable is still off. The player came to me with only 0.5 mm between the motor and the turntable. As such the disc rubbed against the case and focus was impossible. With the paper shims I found out that 0.7 mm resulted in focus from time to time. At 0.7 mm I get focus when pushing the CD slightly towards the laser (reducing the focus distancel. At 0.65 I need to pull the cd slightly for it to focus (increase the focus distance). At either setting did the focus bias adjustment improved the situation. It did however made the tracking quieter, so I know it is doing something. But once the laser focuses, the player works as expected. It plays, it pauses, it jumps from track to track without issues.

So my question is: how big is the range for the focus bias to compensate? My guess is that the final turntable height should be at around 0.68-ish mm, but it is kinda hard to achieve (specially considering that the turntable itself wobbles a little). Is such a small adjustment normal, or should the focus assembly be able to better compensate? Any help is appreciated.

 

My Panasonic SL-S700 had cracked plastic and several broken screw mounts. I tried repairing them with model putty, but it still wouldn't read CDs. The situation was just as described here—it made a terrible noise, yet the CDs showed no signs of physical wear.
Thanks to Jorge's tip, I tried pressing down on the top cover and was surprised to find it could read CDs again. Since I couldn't lower the cover's height any further, I decided to raise the optical pickup instead. The advantages of this approach are: first, it’s much simpler; and second, it maintains the correct distance between the laser lens and the CD. As a result, it can read discs properly even without recalibrating the Tracking Balance (TB) or Focus Balance (FB). Now, I can finally enjoy its wonderful music again.

 

Hello and good day. Thanks a lot for the reply and the pictures, they are worth a 1000 words. After fiddling a lot with the player, I realized that the turntable has been pushed in, which brought the CD too close to the laser. Before any modifications from my side, the turntable was at around 0.5 mm from the motor. After several adjustments, I settled on 0.65 mm (this after completely rebuilding the ABS middle frame and restoring 7 out of 9 screw posts that were completely gone). With 0.7 mm, the CD ended up too far away from the laser and I had to slightly push the CD down for it to focus. With 0.6 mm happened the opposite: the CD was too close and I had to lift it a little (or push on the side opposite to where the laser is) for it to focus. At 0.65 mm the player sometimes focus successfully, while other times it needs a very light tap on the player's case for the focus to work. The eye pattern looks very noisy and I can hear the tracking working quite a lot, but the player works. I know that the motor. I compared the lateral play on the SL-XP700 vs my working SL-XPS900, and they feel very similar.

Nevertheless, considering the very poor condition this player came to me, I am glad that it works at all. I will risk it and open it again to test your solution with the shims (3D-printed PLA parts with self-tapping threads do not like being screwed very often). Did you happen to measure the distance between the motor and the turntable on your player? It would be interesting to know what the factory distance is.

 

I couldn’t get my first XPS700 to work, so I’ve removed the top cover to investigate further. I’ll organize the photos and post them later.
In the meantime, I can provide the measurements you requested. Regarding "the distance between the motor and the turntable," from what I recall, there is no noticeable height difference between the two units I have.
I’m not entirely sure which specific distance you're looking for, but a ruler with a thickness of 0.65mm barely fits into the gap underneath. This means the clearance is less than 0.65mm.

 

Hello again! The measurement you did with the ruller thickness is exactly what I meant. From my experimentation, I found that the gap should be something between 0.6 mm and 0.65 mm, and your measurement corroborates my results. Thanks a lot for that bit of info.