Yamaha CDC 645 CD changer

My dad has the newer version of this. Bump for you.

Hi Kev,

Checking in. This will be perfect for the rig I just moved into my son's room. His K-Mart rig had a 5-disc changer that he missed when my single disc NAD replaced it.

Would like to buy if you can send me your PayPal address and I will pay as soon as I see the message.

Thanks,
Greg

Greg,

If you're interested. I have a sometime-working CDC-645 that you can have for parts. I'm guessing the laser is the issue since the player has been used on average for about 5 hours a week for the last 15 years. I'll be on the east-side of Cleveland this weekend. PM me if you want it and maybe we can meet up. The player worked perfectly for my bedroom set-up. I liked it so much I found the next model up(CDC-745) to replace it.

Cheers!
LJ

So Larry (Avalon) and I were able to meet up on Saturday as he and his family drove a nearby route, and he graciously gifted me his CDC-645 that had been stored for a bit.

This will help me to keep the vintage unit I purchased from Kevin in this thread running hopefully through my son's college days!

In the meantime, I hooked up the unit from Larry (on Saturday) and closely watched its insides to gain a clue about what was going wrong. The unit would generally make quirky little noises reading the CD, but not spin, almost like a "clutch" was slipping. The gentlest touch on top of the drive spindle on top of the CD, however, would set everything into motion with perfect sound. Holding down on that top drive spindle when the CD was spinning would not stop it and lots of torque was evident.

First, I blew out essentially nothing with compressed air as this unit was exceptionally clean and well cared for inside and out. Visually the lens looked very clean and a careful lens cleaning with anhydrous alcohol and camera lens cleaning paper turned up almost no dirt on the lens paper.

I found some helpful articles on the web and removed 4 easy to get to screws and 3 wire plugs to the circuit board and had the motor assembly out in a minute.

I carefully applied a fraction of a drop of Thorens motor spindle oil to the top motor bearing (bottom is sealed) and reassembled.

Now instead of never starting, pushing power off/on or start/stop would cause the unit to start about 1 or 2 times out of 10. I loaded 5 CD's in and listened a bunch on Saturday and Sunday, manually giving the CD a nudge anytime it failed to start.

Well, this morning I had to give the initial CD a nudge, but then it played through all 5 without a nudge. I popped in 5 more and it started properly on #1 and started 2, 3 and just now number 4 without any help!

I'm theorizing the tiny amount of oil took a while to get down to whatever was binding and, knock on wood, that might have been it. Even if the unit fails to start only sometimes, I know how to work around it and can put it into the daily gear lineup

This is a very sweet and natural sounding player and the mint one I bought from Kevin (shipping out today) for my son's rig probably would not have made it there without Larry's kind gift.

THANKS !!

I decided to do the normal A/B comparison stuff I always do when 2 similar units end up on my rack. The units look and sound essentially the same despite being 29,581 serial numbers apart and factory marked January 1994 and January 1995.

I had some extra pieces of Dynamat Extreme lying about so I placed some strips:
--- on the inside of the top metal cover of the unit
--- on the inside of the bottom of the chassis
--- on the top spindle support bracket
--- removed the power supply transformer and placed a strip directly under the transformer (screws right through the Dynamat into the original mounting holes in the chassis)
--- on the resin frame that raises and lowers the motor/laser assembly when the carousel brings a CD to be played.

The entire presentation was improved enough (especially tightened up the bass response) with the Dynamat'd versus non-Dynamat'd unit that I ended up doing both before moving the newer of the units with remote (from Kevin) on to my son's bedroom rig (which is where it was intended to go before I ended up with 2 units).

Does anyone else have any experience adding Dynamat inside of CD players and any other suggested tweaks?

Avalon wrote: »

Greg,

Shoot me an e-mail with your address and I'll mail you the remote for the 645. I would have given it to you before, but I figured you'd just be using it for parts. Glad you were able to get it up and running.

Cheers!

Super! I've just sent an email with my shipping address and a request for your PayPal addy because I simply won't have you shipping it out of pocket after all you've done. I'm listening to the "freebie" now and it works perfectly about 99.9% of the time