Never Stop Learning!

It's a small achievement by some famous YouTuber's measures, but 300+ subscribers is 300 more than I thought I'd get! Thank you for your support - more subscriptions will help me give away more stuff! To celebrate, I'm collaborating with HighFidelity1989 who shipped me a custom Deep House Mix all the way from Shenzhen! I'll be giving away a Panasonic SJ-MJ10 with remote and his custom MD! I've also created a "gapless" copy of his disc with track markers and labels for each track on a nice Axia MD! If you like House music, please check him out on SoundCloud, YouTube, and Instagram. He's a big MiniDisc fan and a nice guy! HighFidelity1989 - YouTube HighFidelity1989 - SoundCloud HighFidelity1989 - Instagram For this fourth giveaway (completely free to enter!), use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter between February 1st and February 14th midnight US Pacific time. a Rafflecopter giveaway Please see official rules, here!     Privacy policy is in...

The HHb MDP500 Portadisc (late 2000) is a rare and interesting "portable" pro-level recorder. It's huge because it's based on a home deck mechanism, not a portable one. It's a physical giant, dwarfing my Sharp MD-MS200 slot-loader! It's festooned with buttons and controls and also features a large, backlit display. The inputs/outputs are phenomenal including a full-sized headphone out, optical in/out, and XLR mic inputs. There's a USB connector, but it's not for NetMD, but rather real-time audio. I'd assume like a USB speaker connected to your PC. I was sent this one because the owner wanted to see if it worked but didn't have the proper powersupply. Also, the 8AA(!) battery holder that it came with was cracked beyond repair. After using this universal adapter, I was happy to see it was working fine, but since it was 20+ years old, I decided to open it up and clean it. Check it out if you'd like to see the insides of one of the more rare r...

  The Sony MZ-R909 (late 2001) is the next-iteration on Sony's MZ-R900. No more dual jog levers since it now had a d-pad and a right jog wheel.  This one came to me courtesy of a YouTube/Discord user that had an interesting issue - the lens had fallen off!   Gluing the lens back didn't work so I tried replacing it with a Sony MZ-R900 laser. It seemed OK, but even after some tuning in the service menu, it wouldn't read consistently. I then swapped it with a "dead" MZ-R909 laser and that didn't work either. My last chance was another junk MZ-R909 I ordered but even that didn't work - so there was probably something wrong with the red unit's board or motor.  I was able to get the user a working model by doing a "shell swap" so check out the video if you ever need to get in and out of a Sony MZ-R909!

More of a "servicing" video than a repair, but if you haven't seen the insides of a Sony MZ-E75, check it out! The Sony MZ-E75 from 1999 is an SP-only player with a neat trick: It has two headphone outputs! It has the usual one by the remote jack, but it also has another one on the side for listening with a friend. I could see this also being used a cheap "line out" for another set of speakers or even for a BT transmitter so your friend could listen wirelessly! This one came unconfirmed and had an old corroded gumstick in there. I couldn't test it with AA batteries since these older Sony models had a different sidecar contact spacing than the ones I had...  After some opening and cleaning, it was back in action!

These MiniDisc player/recorders are little mechanical marvels, but mechanical things can fail due to age and wear.  We see this often with Sharp gears but it also happens to other makes, like Panasonic. I bought this bulk lot from Buyee, thinking I could fix at least 2-3 of them.  Spoiler alert: The pink Panasonic SJ-MJ10 (late 2001) was completely dead, and so was the Sony MZ-R909, but that has some spare parts I might be able to use... Instead of a quick clean and lube, I had to get elbow-deep into the Panasonics, but it gave me the opportunity to do a simple gear/gearshaft swap AND test out some things I heard about online: Gluing or using Loctite to fix broken gears. This should work if the glue is strong enough and the gear is still in good shape (teeth are straight, crack is small).   For the silver Panasonic SJ-MJ10, I used the gear I harvested from the dead pink one. For the blue Panasonic SJ-MJ10, I fixed two broken gears (one came from the silver, one from the...