Earlier tonight, I went to eject a disc from the 99 and got an A3 error code. I'd been having trouble with some CAV discs taking *forever* to spin down and eject, but it was sporadic.

I popped it open, moved the assembly back to its place and it was fine again. Once I was there, I lubricated the gears and cleaned the laser lens and the center hubs which were incredibly dirty- it took 4 or 5 Q-Tips to get it clean.

Once I put in a disc, color saturation was *way* up, but noise was down. I went into the iScan HD menu and reduced saturation from -20 to -37 and voila, that did it and the image has improved even more. Now the question is, could that be the result of the mounting hubs being so filthy, and once they were clean again color saturation went up considerably and noise went even further down?

My guess would be that cleaning the laser lens helped the focus. Laserdisc is a weird beast in that it has a wide tolerance of things being out of spec. Using a scaler can sometimes hide the obvious signs that something isn't quite right. For example, crosstalk can be quite obvious on a CRT SD TV cueing you into a misalignment but a scaler can "smudge" over crosstalk giving you a slightly worse than ideal picture, but no obvious signs that something is amiss.

Again, this is my best guess.

all i can say is that after playing my CLD-D503 with the top off and seeing the laser in action I WOULD NEVER USE ANYTING ON THE LASER.
i want to say you are really lucky that you didn't damage that, there are super tiny wires that goto the laser to track it,
not on the rails but keeping the laser in the correct distance with the disc itself really thin.

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the rein-o official signature:

Thanks guys. Rein-o, I've cleaned the lenses of several CD/LD/DVD/DVD-R decks with no bad occurrences, thankfully. However, a warped single-sided 8" disc threw my CLD-2080 out of alignment years ago. It's still behind my couch if someone wants it for parts.

Laserdisc is a composite format, so anything that reduces noise or boosts signal in higher frequencies will improve color. Enjoy

i believe you circlesky.
the laser that i saw in my player seemed very delicate and not like the normal laser in CD players.
so you may have been very careful or lucky?? i hope or both?

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the rein-o official signature:

Rein-o, I'd say it was six of one and a half-dozen of the other. I'm *very* careful when I repair stuff, to the point of making a trail of parts when I remove them- when done, I just reverse the trail.