The 1985 Sony CFD-5, this is the first boombox or portable device to feature a CD player in history, pretty cool.

This is my first foray into audio repair. I've never opened a boombox or any audio device ever, so this will be a large learning experience. If it wasn't for youtube this would have been a lot harder to figure out.

Shout outs:
Brett the thrett on reddit, this man hooked me up with the service manual within 5 minutes of me requesting it, absolute legend.
@12voltvids - a plethora of audio repair knowledge
@StevesElectronicRepairShop tons of info on cassette repairs and more

The first issue was that the right channel was much quieter than the left. I initially figured this could be an issue with the capacitors in either the right channel input or speaker output. I tested all the caps that I could and they turned out to be fine. I then put the stereo back together to make sure I didn't break anything, and low and behold the channels were both equalized! It wasn't until later that I realized this didn't have anything to do with the caps, more like a finicky input selector switch. I realized this one night while I was messing with the radio and I could hit the switch in just the right place to reproduce the issue, after I cleaned it out thoroughly it was working just fine.

Next I tackled the cassette deck, it wouldn't work but I could hear the motor spinning so I figured most likely it was just the belts that needed replacing. I was able to replace the belts and it worked better than it did, so it would actually play the tape, but then after about 5 seconds it would automatically stop. This was due to the timer belt also needing replaced, so once I did that it could play and stop just fine. Rewind also worked just fine, but fast forward did not. I took the unit apart again and I couldn't really see anything other than one of the springs had come off, I don't think this was really the issue though, because after moving the fast forward mechanism by hand it finally started to get easier and easier, I think this was just stuck over time from it not being used frequently. After that I reassembled and it all worked!!

Lastly I moved on to the CD player, I wasn't planning on spending a lot of time on this, but it grew into a monster. I initially thought it was just dirty, or the tracking rails needed to be cleaned and lubed, that didn't work. I then moved on to adjusting the 5 different potentiometers on the main PCB, this worked the best, although still not perfect and the playback and searching of tracks was still very inconsistent. I eventually put an oscilloscope on it and adjusted it as per the manual, however I couldn't really get far because the signal was still so inconsistent that the tests would be incomplete. I gave it one last effort and took it apart for the 3rd time, and adjusted any pot I could find regarding laser output and still to no avail. The CD player technically works, but just inconsistently. I may do a resto-mod on this at some point and drop a newer laser pickup in the box, or even a portable CD player.

This is the first of many videos on boomboxes.

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⛧ \\ Table of Contents: \\ ⛧

00:00 - Intro \ Bluetooth
02:26 - Teardown + Repair
10:10 - Cassette Repair
14:38 - Reassembly
17:08 - Cassette Rematch (finally fixed)
20:03 - Oh Lord The CD PLayer
32:45 - Conclusion

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