Hello all. I recently stumbled across the above laserdisc player along with a selection of about 200 films for sale at a local car boot sale. I always wanted a laserdisc player (don't ask cause I don't know) and for £50 I couldn't pass the offer.

I have a few issues getting it up and running properly, firstly was the odd PAL60 output it created when playing NTSC discs. Soon sorted that with the NTSC mod, then had issues with it not playing CDs or not playing all LDs properly. Again that was soon fixed by cleaning the laser lens.

The query however is the quality of the image it produces. Its not that the image quailty is bad its more that it seems to be filled with interference and only with CLV discs and some are worse than others. All CLV films when played produce shadowing in the image (mostly notable on text during credits etc) and there is obvious noise, almost looks like audio interference ontop of the clean picture (if that makes any sence). I also notice during high sound level scenes (the THX logo for example) there is distortion coming from the channels, almost as if there was a gain turned up to high. As I say this only seems to effect CLV discs, CAV discs are fine.

I can't help but wonder if the too faults are connected? Is it possible to shield the video or audio sides of the boards internally to cut down on the noise? I noticed a bunch of presummably adjustable resistors on the board. Didn't touch any of them but was wondering if someone else maybe did resulting in the problems? Or perhaps when I carried out the mod and didn't use a particularly heavy or shielded cable would this cause the problem?

I would be grateful of any advice.

Can it be crosstalk, guys?

I've been doing some googleing this afternoon and have manged to get a copy of the service manual for the player. From what I've read cross talk seems to be the problem and I think I can nail it down to the tilt sensor adjustment. When cleaning last night I have to admit I knocked this part on the pickup and broke a glued seal around the screw. It seems I may of fixed one problem and caused another.

Unfortunately I do not have the test disc necessary to properly setup the sensor as described in the service manual. Would it be feasible to use any disc? I suspose I'll just suck it an see making slight adjustments until I get the desired image. Since this was the only thing knocked I presum it would be better to only adjust it rather than touching any of the variable resistors.

Doing some further reading perhaps it would be better adjusting the electrical side of the tilt sensor rather than fiddling with the screw. I'll give it all a go tonight and see how I get on.

I haven't had a ton of experience adjusting players, so others can jump in to elaborate or correct, but the two adjustments that seem to affect crosstalk the most are the tangential (most likely culprit) and tilt balance adjustments. Since you have the service manual, #4 Pick-up inclination adjustment and #7 Tilt balance.

You'll probably need an 8" disc to access the adjustment points on the pickup. Also make sure the tilt servo is in the neutral position then turned off when you do the inclination adjustment.

Had a fiddle with it last night. I don't have any 8" discs so had to just do small adjustment, test, small adjustment, test etc. Took a while but I think its sorted. All but the crosstalk gone except some very small issues on a warped disc but I suspose that is to be expected. I had a look at the inclination adjustment but don't feel confident tampering with this now that the image seem stable.

The picture does look a bit grainy on the 50" panasonic, if anything it looked sharper with the cross talk all be it covered in wavy lines lol but I used the TV to calibrate as it showed the crosstalk 10x worse. On the projector in the man cave were the player spends 90% of its time the image is grand.

OR so I thought. Sat down to watch Star Trek Generations last night. It played fine until the very end of side 2 (CAV) and it started jumping and stuttering again. Sooooo, opened the lid got the screw drivers out and started fiddling. Firstly I went after the tracking adjustment as the film seems to be skipping between tracks more than anything. Any adjustment I made just made the problem worse so put that back were it was and went to the tilt sensor. After nearly an hour of adjusting I got it so the film would play up to say the last 500 - 1000 frames of side 2. Say the last 1/4" - 1/2" of the disc. At this point it just fails no matter what I do. So stuck in side 3 (CLV) and the crosstalk issue is back. Talk about annoyance. Ended up putting it back to get rid of the cross talk which mucks up side 2 again, approximately the last 5 minutes of the film on this side.

I was wondering if a warped disc would cause this tracking problem. Not that you can see it at full speed but the is an obvious wobble from the disc as it spins up. If you hover your finger of the disc at the edge you can feel it is not level i.e. it would hit you finger then miss, hit, miss etc etc. The disc looks flat but I suspose it could be a very minor warp or is there any adjustment to be made on the motor mounting that might cause this?

Am starting to think it might be better to get someone who knows what they are doing to look at it.

Try a few more discs to see if multiple discs fail to play out to the end.

sounds like you are getting there but still need to tweek it.
remember, this isn't like a record player, its very small adjustments.
from what I remember in other posts, the tilt is for the warped disc, and is off when it gets to the later part of the disc.
so if the disc is warped and you don't have something else correctly adjusted then you will get issues.

you really need that test disc to set it up right, but also you need some more gear to make sure.
this way you have a standard to set the player to.

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the rein-o official signature:

Both of these are good points. You should be able to diagnose the problem without proper gear (test disc and oscilloscope) but you'll kind of be shooting around in the dark trying to fix it. The tilt may be what you're most comfortable messing around with, but that may not be the problem and therefore not the solution.

To diagnose what the problem might be: Try a large number of discs and see if they play all the way to the end. See if it will play track 1 of an audio CD. Does it take a long time to search to a chapter?

You should also try directly contacting the experienced service techs on this site: grasshopper, krbahr, and ldservice. They've all offered up helpful advice to me in the past.