Well it’s been a very long time without a CD player, can’t say i have really missed one.
But for a bargain £200 i grabbed this and it even works.
Running it as a transport only and it’s doing a nice job, not even going to try using it’s built in dac.
The reason is i dont have 4 meter long RCA cables or a spare mains socket behind my rack.
But it does complement my sony elcaset rather nicely on the vintage rack.
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Is that a X3000 ES??
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Yes
The 5000 would have been even nicer, but for £200 i couldn’t resist
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I’ve not looked, but £200 sounds like a nice price for an ES CD player. Looks great too!
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They probably do go for a bit more normally, but the market isn’t great at the moment so probably got a bargain really.
I was just surprised everything worked plus you can still get the laser transport for less than £30 new. Bonus.
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Had to go in the loft and find my CD’s.
Just picked a few as i have no intention to bring them all back down.
It was more to go with my sony elcaset than anything else.
But it’s nice to have the option to spin a CD when needed i guess.
Nice top loader 
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Nice to hear I’m not the only one looking to dust off his CDs…! I intend to pair my old Nakamichi CD Player 2 once repaired (which has half decent specs) with my Naim Uniti Qute2. It should be interesting to compare the sound created via the old DAC (20-bit Dual Burr Brown D/A converter / PCM1700P - SM5840CP chip) with the Q2 which is 20 years younger! Apparently, the Q2 uses a single Burr Brown DAC chip - and several HiFi specialists have advised me not to assume that an older DAC will sound worse. We’ll see. Otherwise, I’ll simply use the Nakamichi as a CD transport.
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Nice , when Sony decide to make a decent product they will.
Last one being the headphone amplifier, but they come and go with no real commitment to serious audio design and quality
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Nice… 
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Lovely!
I bought my 90’s dream a few years ago (Rotel RCD-965 BX) for £40 and am very pleased with it.
I always stream, but my wife wanted the simplicity of a CD player.
Nice weighty bit of kit that;
with a music calendar un the display.
my dream portable sony cd player had a music calendar too.
Still use a 90s Denon (cd player) in the rig for the same reason; seeing which tracks are still to play…
(of course I engage ‘display off’ via the remote when listening).
I’d buy TWO laser replcements for the cupboard, at those prices…
They degrade just sitting on the shelf though.
I recently had to recap a NOS laser mech that hit 20 years old and wouldn’t go when fitted. I’ve recapped almost anything a person can care to think of - usually a lot of surface mount stuff. But this was hard as hell. And it still probably only has a couple years on it. The lens looks slightly foggy. Which happens to any lens not made of glass after a time.
So be warned that keeping spare mechs on hand in no way guarantees repairability of a player that needs a new mech.
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For £200 i am not that bothered if and when it breaks as will fix if i can if not bin it.
It’s only really here for a bit off fun when i feel like spinning a cd and nothing else.
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Indeed, CD is having a bit of revival at the moment in many markets… and according to @feeling_zen it had never gone away in Japan. One is starting to see little bits of innovation again in servo designs/transports in some newer products.
This renown CDP from yesteryear you have snapped up looks like it will be fun, and from a transport perspective, even if not from a DAC and filter perspective which really shows it age, is well regarded.
Enjoy. I am considering a yesteryear transport at the moment too… having annoyingly auctioned three of mine away several years back.
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Transport only can be a very cheap way to do it if you already have a good dac.
Why have 2 dac’s as one is always going to be better than the other or different.
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That looks very nice indeed. I love the classic design of CD players. I think the current crop of players try to be too understated and therefore look very boring.
One little bit of innovation I would like to see in modern CD players is support for gapless playback.
Yes, you read that right. Not all modern CD players support gapless playback.
Do a web search on “modern cd players don’t support gapless playback” and then read and weep. (I can’t link directly because linking to other discussion forums violates the AUP of this forum.)
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I do wish that there will be a CD revival , that’s a very good excuse for me to upgrade to esoteric K01 XD 
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