So I've had my laserdisc player since about 1998, and it's a killer machine that's served me very well over the years. I got it repaired once maybe 10 years ago or something, when it was having problems with opening and switching sides.
Now mind you, there is no repair shop where you can take a laserdisc player to get fixed—you have to know somebody. By chance, I had met this woman who goes by "Maxeene the Laserdisc Queen," and she did a fantastic job getting it back into like-new condition.
But that's just a little background information. The point is, sometime in the last couple of years, my player developed this glitch where on side B of a disc, it will start going into a skipping "loop" within the first minute or two of playing. It's easy to get past with a little fast-forwarding, but it's very annoying.
I decided to do a little digging around online to see if this was a problem others had run into, and came to find out that it's VERY common with my particular line of players, the Pioneer DVL series. I also found a number of instructional posts about how to fix it.
Of course, I could have just hit up Maxeene again to handle it, but something she said to me when I first met her had stuck with me: that as someone who loves the format, she decided she wanted to learn everything she could about the inner workings of players, because—as I noted above—there are no shops where you can take them.
Don't get me wrong here, most of these "fix it yourself" instructionals that I came across were pure gibberish to me. I still have no idea what the bulk of them were talking about. But there was one that seemed straightforward enough to me that I thought maybe I could give it a try.
That said, I had never once taken apart my player on my own, and the thought of it terrified me. What if I fucked it up beyond repair? But at the same time, there are a few other electronic repairs I've successfully done on my own over the years, so I thought the risk might be worth it. After all, if I really did fuck it up, THEN I could go to Maxeene.
So, I opened up my player, as you can see above. Scary, right? Without getting technical (which I couldn't even if I wanted to), there are these two screws that the instructional I was following said had to be adjusted JUST RIGHT to make the looping stop.
I tried. It said you had to make micro-adjustments, one-by-one, and remember where you started. Trial and error. And that's what I did. One little twist this way, another that. Over and over. With some, the looping got worse. With others it improved, but never did it just go away entirely.
At a certain point, I decided I didn't want to pursue this any further, and I would just live with the looping.
That was two years ago. And then today, for whatever reason, I decided to go back in and give it the old college try one more time.
So I opened up my player once again. I immediately located the two screws that apparently are the source of this issue—there's a white one and a black one. According to the instructional, loosening the black one about a quarter turn does the trick. So that's what I did.
I put in my new This Is Spinal Tap disc, which had displayed the looping problem when I watched it the other night, and flipped to side B. It played perfectly.
Wondering if that had just been a fluke, I put in another recent acquisition that had done the same—The Quick and the Dead. It, too, played perfectly.
I thought to myself, "If one more plays with no problem, I'm going to consider this fixed." So I put in Jurassic Park. Perfect.
I am hoping and praying that this is truly resolved now. I promise I'll report back if it's not, but signs point to that I did it. And I've never felt more accomplished in my life.
Viva la revolución!
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