Hi guys. I have an R7G which worked perfectly fine when I purchased it but after a few weeks of using it I noticed it was taking a long time to start side B and then getting stuck in a loop after playing awhile. It also has a hard time chapter searching. It then started doing this on Side A. I ordered the m-holder and replaced it and put a little bit of lithium grease on the gears. I also cleaned all of the rails and sliders and applied a light coat of lithium grease to them.

It still has pretty much all of the same problems now. Any suggestions? Should I just order a whole new pickup and replace it?

EDIT: I should mention that when I went in and replaced the m-holder I noticed there was a screw missing from it so it looks like somebody has already been in and messed with the player at one point and time. It still has the loctite on the centering screws etc. though.

If it's having trouble searching, something in the alignment is off. Replacing the pickup wouldn't help because you would have to make the same adjustments to fix the problem you're seeing now. The service manual will list the adjustment procedures and a brief description of symptoms if it's not properly adjusted.

to add, from what I was told the M holder is not the same as the others that goes bad, so you may have replaced that for nothing.

like gumby is saying, if the laser is off you will need to adjust it, but you really need a scope for that, you shouldn't do it with 1 single disc
unless its a test disc.

it may only play half of your discs after you adjust it without all the proper stuff.
ask krbahr or grasshopper, send them a PM and they could help you??

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the rein-o official signature:

That's a bummer lol. I do have ggv1069. Is it possible to calibrate the pickup without a scope? Is there a step-by-step tutorial for dummies somewhere? Thanks for the info!

BTW, looking at the old m-holder and the new one, they look identical. I measured them both with a set of calipers and everything is pretty much spot on between the two.

I thought the m holder was the same as a 406 through 606???


Will look... it has to be the problem for side B if it played fine!!!

sorry, I was told that the M holder in the R7G was updated to the black one???
but now I may be mistaken

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the rein-o official signature:

It very well could have....

Side A plays OK???

Another thing is play a audio CD all the way through!!

Side A also skips/loops after playing for a few minutes but it plays fine from the start. Side B has a hard time starting. The triangular Play sign and The B flash for quite awhile before starting and it makes a noise when it does start. Side B skips/loops after playing for a few minutes and has a hard time finding chapters. It did play fine for the first month or so that I had the thing so I don't think it was too bad out of whack when I first received it?

The box for the m-holder says vnl1700 and vnl1779. The 2 models listed on the box are cld-d925 and cld-d515. The existing m-holder that I replaced was black and the new one that I installed was black as well. Like I said though, there was a screw missing from the m-holder when I got to it. I've since replaced it but that tells me somebody else has been under the bonnet. Possibly somebody even stupider than me lol.

The pickup appears to be the vwt1110. I guess all of these models have that pickup though.

I will give the cd a try!

The M holder was not the issue. Pioneer changed to the black one when the DVL series came out. The R7G came out during the DVL timeframe and Pioneer used the improved black one in it. If you are also having issues with Side A then try spindle motor centering. Put in a CD and then there is a dial to the left back side of spindle motor you can put a screw driver into to turn. Turn it to find the two extremes where the CD playback starts to breakup and then center the dial between the extremes. If this does not work then either the pickup is bad or it needs full adjustments.

Thanks for the tips. It sounds to me like this would be easier to do with the tray out of the way. I'll probably get around to trying this next week sometime. I will report back with the outcome.

Ok. I put a cd in and tried it like grasshopper suggested. It plays fine up until about the 11 minute mark and starts to skip and loop. I'm going to now try what krbahr has told me to do. I'm going to first breeze through a service manual and figure out how to remove the tray and then try to do the adjustments for spindle motor centering.

EDIT: It seems there is a spot for a screwdriver to fit without removing the tray. At the moment I have just centered it back to where the factory center mark is. It was about halfway between the center mark and the next mark to the left. If I moved it any further past that point it messed up. Coincidentally, if I moved it to the right it messed up in about the same position but on the right side of the factory center mark. I dunno for sure yet though. It still seems to be doing the same thing. I will play around with it a bit more and see what happens. I notice that the left channel seems to be cutting out once in awhile too while playing a cd.

EDIT 2: Yeah after centering the spindle motor to the best of my ability it still starts messing up on the cd at about 11 minutes playback time every time. What now? Should I purchase a scope and frequency counter and try to do a full adjustment on the machine?

EDIT 3: Well I put in ggv1069 and decided to play around with the spindle centering. After some trial and error where I bump the screw just a little bit at a time I've gotten it to where it will start on Side A and Side B without any noise or hesitation. It still occasionally skips on both sides after a few minutes play no matter how much I adjust it though. Weird that it worked fine for the first few weeks that I had it. BTW, now that I've adjusted it where the LD will start on both sides the CD always gives me a P5 error now and refuses to start. I dunno what to do lol.

If your audio is starting to breakup then it is either tangential or tilt adjustments but could be RF level out of the pickup. Is there an RF level adjustment?

I don't see any RF level adjustment. There is video level.

Didn't think there would be, the R7G main board is based off the CLD-59/D604 US players with video modifications for the 3D Adaptive addition.

Do you have any recommendations on a good cheap oscilloscope which is capable of doing everything I need to do a full adjustment on the machine? I guess a freq. counter is needed too?

Depends on how available used scopes are around there. You only really need 20mhz bandwidth or so, so a used HP/Agilent or Tektronix in good shape would work fine. Rigol scopes aren't perfect, but they're relatively cheap new and they might be able to do frequency counting, I'll have to check.

just remember, you need a scope, the test disc and possibly a test remote.
good luck on getting the last two

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the rein-o official signature:

I have ggv1069 and if I understand correctly I can short a couple of wires and put the machine in test mode which should allow me to do it without the remote. I'm not sure about that but that's what the manual seems to imply. It says I also need a cd test disc. I believe that will be the hardest to find of all so hopefully that's not entirely critical to have.

Yeah - once you're in test mode you can use the regular remote I think. Not really sure what to do about the test CD, but just a plain audio CD should be useful.

I've only adjusted a few players but it doesn't seem like the test CD is essential. Having A CD for setting the spindle centering is, but you can use anything.