I just got a CLD-R7G in the mail today. It plays discs and they look excellent, BUT it makes this grinding noise when skipping around chapters.

It came from Japan -> US and it wasn't packed very well.

Anybody know what might be wrong? Loose gear somewhere? Spindle motor?

My phone's mic makes it sound louder than it is, but it's still pretty noticeable in person.

The R7G comes with the gray color MHolder that is known to break, the laser movement gear holding pins break and when both are bad it could sound like that. I would start with replacing the Mholder.

The MHolder? That's unfortunate if that's the problem, I've read these are a bit difficult to replace? I'm not very handy with stuff like this. I guess the first step would be to open the thing up and take a peek at things.

This claims to be R7G compatible, but just thought I'd run it by you since you have so much experience with this stuff: https://www.ebay.com/itm/175989514577

Are there any other symptoms I'd notice if the MHolder is the issue? This thing is extremely silent any other time during playback.

The player is returnable if I need to do that, even with free shipping back but I'd like see what my chances of fixing it are first since the unit otherwise seems fine.

Now that I'm listening closer, I also just noticed a very, very light grinding noise when I start playing the disc. After it spins up and it tries to seek the laser to the beginning.

I took off the cover and had a peek in there. Here's what I can see of the mholder without taking it apart further.

It actually looks a lot easier to work in there than I expected.

I did just notice one other issue with the player though once I played a CAV side (as side B). At the end of the disc after the movie credits, it started skipping back on the frame count and looping a ~10 second clip of the Paramount logo over and over until I stopped playback. I wonder what else is wrong now. Something with the calibration I assume, but as I said earlier, I noticed no issue with the picture quality (on CLV or CAV) but I haven't spent too much time watching discs yet, only a few minutes. I'll have to play some more.

Maybe there actually is some noise in the picture and a calibration issue after all? I'm now noticing things on certain scenes. There appears to be some unusual noise in Private Ryan's face and jacket in this frame. This is captured via S-Video out.




Here's the same frame from my Denon LA-2300 for comparison. No such noise. Or at least, much less.

Most likely the spindle motor. I just bought a DVL-909 that was making the exact same noise. Even though the noise sounds like it should be related to lens movement, I couldn't find anything wrong there. So I swapped the spindle motor with my other DVL-909 (which was mechanically fine but has weird electrical noise in the LD video out), and the noise is gone.

With the motors out of the units I couldn't find anything obviously wrong or different with the bad one. The bearings felt fine when turning it by hand.

Thanks that may be worth a try. I have a DVL-919 I could potentially use as a donor, but I hate to do that's functional. (Despite a bit of a crosstalk problem)

I have some other players as well, I wonder if most of them share the same motor.

That is the improved MHolder in the pictures so that would not be the issue. If the spindle motor is getting too much friction it will not slowly spin at a steady speed to play a CD. If too loose then try a CAV LD and it should be really noisy. To me the noise in the video is more of a laser tracking issue and not a spindle motor.

I would actually start with trying a spindle motor centering and then try the alignment procedure for the laser.

Thanks for the replies, but honestly between a potential spindle motor issue and a tracking issue, I am probably going to take up the seller's offer on a free return and try my luck with another.

Don't I need a special (expensive) Pioneer service disc to properly calibrate the laser?

I did play a movie where one side was CAV and it was not making any unusual noise during normal playback. It was very quiet.

If someone here wants to buy it from me and can easily repair it for their own use, I'd be happy to go that route too, but I'd have to charge what I paid for that to compete with a free return. ($300) There appears to be nothing wrong with it other than the two issues mentioned. I'd prefer it not to end up in a landfill, which is what I assume the original seller would do with it.

Or maybe I could talk him into a 50% partial refund and see if I can fix it myself. I'm sure he'd prefer that over giving me all my money back and getting a broken LD player in return.

I'd go along with the spindle motor as the cause - I had a similar issue here:

[DVL-909] Clattering noise when skipping chapters

You mention you didn't get any noise when playing a CAV disc - was that even when skipping chapters?

That would definitely point to the motor being the issue, as, for chapter skipping, there's no difference from the point of view of the laser between CAV and CLV, so if it were that making the noise, it would do it on both - but there is for the motor - very fast deceleration and acceleration needed for CLV (which is probably what's causing the noise), but just constant speed for CAV.