What a bunch of great information. Sorry I've missing in action here. I took it off, cleaned the lens again (and lots more times)... and it's kind of livable now.

It plays often on first try, sometimes 1 or 2 more. Once in, with the next start, it often does a CHECK CD but then within a minute or two it starts playing. All music CDs played the 1st time.

It played two homemade CD-Rs just fine, and two wouldn't play with many tries. So I don't play them much in the car anyway, and could copy them to CD+Rs if need be -- or get modern and get them onto a ipod or such device.

So I'm stoked!

I'm still tempted to do more but don't want to mess it up accidentally. I have another CD boombox that's broken, so I may try working on that, now that I have the courage.

On this CD the possible additional fix seems to be turning over the player, and from the bottom taking out the tiny screw on the box that goes up and down the spirally thing (to give it a technical name). The other side of the box is the mirror. So I'd guess that opening it up (by unscrewing), will expose the mirror. And that since cleaning the lens helped, likely the mirror would make maybe even the rest of the difference. My worry is that there's adjustments that will get knocked out just by unscrewing that box. ....??


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Makeup applicators - hadn't thought about it, but that'd be much better than q-tips. Also I probably have some sponge-type paint brushes from the hardware store.


Sam who set up this forum writes that CD cleaners can damage the player. It answered what I was wondering - how does anyone know how to build a brush close enough in distance and high for all the variety of CD players, to work? So very useful to hear the read experiences and feedback you all have had. I had tried one and got lucky that it didn't damage anything.