CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[Husker Du]

Hi fellow CED collectors. I have a question I hope someone could answer. I got a collection of CED’s and included in the collection was a SGT250 player. The player works fine, except every minute or so the disc starts to skip. It basically happens whenever the number on the display is about to change. What would be the cause of this? Does this mean that the needle needs to be replaced or is this something to do with a motor?

If someone could please answer this question I would really appreciate it.


Also, are there many members on this forum from Ontario?

[Beetlescott]

Hello, and welcome to CEDmagic! Does the skipping happen at the same time on the counter? Like I had one that used to start skipping like crazy at 47. The stulus arm was catching on the top. Now you will be happy to know that the SGT250 is considered a "tank" in it's durability. If the CEDs skip on different points, then you may possibly need a new stylus.
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1000 titles
SGT-250
SJT-400
Montgomery Ward
SGT-100

[Jesse Skeen]

If you've never seen a CED being played before, it's important to note that just about ALL of them skip at some point or another- it's just a 'feature' of the format and a big reason why it failed.
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[Husker Du]

Thanks for the replies.

When I load in a disc it spins fine. But I need to push the chapter advance button to actually get the movie to play. Once the movie is playing everything seems fine, until whenever the counter is going to the next number (i.e. 5 turns into 6) the disc starts to do a lot of skipping back and forth for about 5 seconds. When it goes to the next number it plays fine again until it’s about to hit the next number and it starts skipping again. Then when the disc hits about 42 on the counter the stylus seems stuck and going over the same grooves. One thing I did notice is that whenever it starts skipping the servo drive gears speed up and then stop when the chapter changes. I took the top off the player to look inside.

I have tried a bunch of discs and the same thing happens with all of them.

Other than this problem the player works great.

Any answers or advice is appreciated.

[Rixrex]

Best thing to do for a start is look over the CEd player repair solutions here:

http://cedmagic.com/tech-info/repair-solutions.html#worn-out-stylus-tip

There's about three in there that describe some of your symptoms. You could actually have more than one problem that makes it difficult to diagnose. For example, it sounds like you might have a combination of worn out servo drive belt, with misaligned pickup arm or pickup arm getting caught on the stylus cover hatch, and even a landing latch misalignment.

I had one SGT 250 that had the black plastic stylus lid knob that was getting snagged on the hatch door, and removing the knob solved it.

Check out the easiest one first, in this case the landing latch, and then move on to the next.

But if you have another stylus that's good, try that first, since it's the easiest, and see if there's a difference. I'm not certain, but the replaying you describe really isn't skipping in the common sense where the disc skips forward, and your problem sometimes happens because the stylus deflection signal isn't getting to the stylus arm advance motor properly, and the motor doesn't advance exactly when it should in order to keep the stylus in correct alignment, so it's reading the same thing over and over.

I wonder if the signal that makes the LED display change is causing some sort of interference here? Any ideas from anyone?