I've seen mention in places that you can send your LD player to Pioneer in Japan to be serviced. Has anyone done this? I'd be interested to learn more and prepare to send my player away for preventative maintenance in the near future.

I realise it would be very expensive to do, but to be honest if you take in to account the cost of buying a pristine condition player today it works out pretty good. My CLD-D925 is like new, one previous owner and fully boxed with all paperwork etc so I'd like to keep it.

If anyone can send on a few pointers of how to get a service booked that would be great. Thank you!

If it ain't broke don't fix it.


Not worth it to waste the time and money to do so until its actually broken, and then it will be something like a laser or spindle which they
don't even have now let alone in 5-20 years.

It makes a LOT more sense to buy a player in Japan, have it sent to Pioneer from there, and then ship it to the US. The 925 isn’t worth half the money it would take to have it repaired by Pioneer. Buy a flagship deck from a junk shop for $200 and have them fix that.

You’d need a friend or a proxy or something. Even if your Japanese is perfect it will be hard to talk a random person into this.

From his profile he is in Ireland, but still agree, this sounds like the best thing to do.

Would probably end up being cheaper in the long run.
Cost of sending 925 to Japan, then tune up cost and the shipping back to Ireland would be crazy.

I'm guessing on low end 400 bucks, 100 for shipping each way packed well so there is no damage and 200 for tuneup at the cheapest cost.

Yeah, about what it would take to buy an R7G at Hard Off and have it shipped only once.

Yeah that's fair enough I guess. I just like my LD player a lot and as it's near mint I'd like to keep hold of it rather than buy another if it ever did develop a problem.

Thanks though all.

I can understand. I have lots of players because I don’t ever want to be out. My advice is keep the 925 and then also buy every other player you can afford.

There's a shop down London way called Babber Electronics who were still looking at players and are Pioneer Authorised. Whether they'd be able to help if you're D925 failed or not I don't know , but they'd be a better shot than trying to send the unit to Japan... the shipping there and back just wouldn't be worth it... it'd be expensive enough to ship it to London from Ireland!!

BTW, Babber were happy to look at UK players when I last spoke to them, but were very reluctant to mess with Japanese market stuff, so bear that in mind!

Is there still some extant sliver of the old Pioneer that “authorizes” anything? Are you sure it isn’t just a really old sign?

I have no idea if they have a "sign", I was put on to them by Pioneer UK originally as they are / were part of their authorised UK dealer / repairer network.

Obviously "authorised" today is only really relevant to whatever electronics Pioneer still sell I suppose.

Either way, finding anyone in the UK who know's how to repair a LD player is going to be a challenge!

I seriously doubt they would service a european model 240 Volt player in Japan at all.
Let alone have documentation and parts for it.
It might not be easy, but I think it could still be possible to find someone in Europe to service it, if needed.

The US has no official spares anymore. I assumed only Japan did but there may be some strong consumer protection that keeps Pioneer EU open. Probabky not.

With no spares all you need is a good tech, there must be 1000 in the UK. It can be very hard to identify them though...

I have a 925 that had a few issues. I decided on getting an HLD X9 from Japan.

I'm going to keep the 925 and give it some TLC the loading belt has been changed. Thats a very easy self serviceable thing.
However the player has a bit of dust and grime inside I wonder what to clean, how and what to grease. Got a tube of lithium grease.

Is VEB1184 the right loading belt for the 925?

Thanks so much everyone for all your comments and help with this. It's great to get some good information. As much as a high-end LD player appeals, I do like my 925 a lot, it does everything you woukd really want an LD player to do, so I would rather keep it well looked after for as long as possible.

Yes, that's the correct part number for the loading tray belt.

I've had mine (D925) from new, and, touch wood, never had any issues with it.

Brilliant thanks! Might buy one as a spare for the future.

For LD in 2019? Probably not.

I was really pleased to find an authorized Parasound repair shop close enough for me to drive to. I need to have that guy touch up stuff before he retires, he is pretty old. I tried to learn that kind of stuff myself, but I'm just not good enough at it that I trust myself with 20+ year old gear that still costs a lot used today.

forget that dream about "Hard Off" ,last time i was there (2012) a mint used R6 costed about 220 euro, the only opportunity is to go to Junk section but there is a risk there

I didn’t realize they had a non-junk section.

Ever been to a Hard Off? There's always shelves of shrink-wrapped players that work.