Dave:
The difficult case is if the CD player has been exposed to tobacco
smoke (and I suspect cannabis smoke is about as bad). Tobacco-smoke
tar is pernicious: it gets into almost everywhere and forms a nasty
film on the surfaces it touches. From what I've heard it will even
get into plug-in connectors and can cause the contacts to become
intermittent with time.

Light dusting won't touch it, and I don't think isopropyl alcohol will
dissolve it. Consumer Reports uses it as their "difficult to remove"
surface contaminant when testing things such as window-cleaning
fluids. I'm not sure it's possible to get it off of CD-player lenses
without the use of damaging detergents and/or scrubbing.


As I'm reading, I will work harder next time (!!) to make sure I'm not buying a smoker's car that was fixed up well, so I can't smell it. There's only one givaway in this car, a slight grey mark up where a person would hold their hand out a window. When a detailer steamed the roof, he showed me on cloth that it had been a smoker's car.

The 91% seems to have cleaned off the lens. It's not 100% working, but it's much much better. Though it was cleaning a tiny surface by rubbing it many times in different directions. Then thinking I was done and doing it a few more times later on.