Recently I was given for free a Sony RCD-W3 with the following symptoms, CD recorder drive reads CDs without any issues (haven't tested recording function yet because I don't intend to burn CDs on that machine) but the reader drive shows disc error after some seconds of it trying to read CD. Tried both CD-Rs and commercial audio CDs with same results.
First thing to do was to clean the lens but that didn't change anything. Googling the issue revealed that this is a common issue on several Sony CD recorder machines and the culprit is SMD electrolytic caps located on the PCB bellow the drives going bad.
I decided to check every single cap on that machine with my ESR/capacitance meter.
All the caps on the power supply board were found OK.
On the green PCB that hosts the back panel audio connectors all the caps were found OK except a visibly bulging Licon capacitor that is located next to the relay, so I replaced that cap.
Then, very carefully removed the 2 optical drives. You should try to remove the 2 CD drives and the PCB bellow them all together as 1 piece and not do as I did. There are flex cables bellow the optical drives that make it very difficult to work while the PCB and the drives are still inside the device.
Anyway, after carefully disconnecting the flex cables and removing the optical drives, I checked every SMD electrolytic capacitor with my ESR meter and found several of them to be bad, most of them totally open! I am really grateful that none of them leaked electrolyte on the PCB.
I decided to replace the caps with used capacitors I have pulled out of other machines, because the device is of no special value to me, economical or sentimental, so I didn't want to spend money on the repair. I also replaced only the caps that were found bad upon testing in circuit. There is a chance that there might be more bad caps there but due to being connected in parallel with other caps, the ESR meter was not able to detect it.
If your unit is important to you, it's better to try to replace all the capacitors on that board, using caps from known Japanese manufacturers rated for 105C, general purpose or entry level low ESR and definitely not ultra low ESR as that might detune the circuit. I used a mix of 85C and 105C capacitors that I first tested to make sure they didn't go bad in storage. Total number of caps replaced: 14
Number of caps left alone: 20
After the recap, reconnected everything paying attention not to damage the flex cables or break a connector.
Finally, I connected it to AC mains and made sure both drives now work without any issues!
The only issue that I found is that when I play extremely scratched CDs I get audible jitter, mainly on the repaired drive but also on the recorder drive on some occasions.
I attach some before and after pics of the repair for reference
First thing to do was to clean the lens but that didn't change anything. Googling the issue revealed that this is a common issue on several Sony CD recorder machines and the culprit is SMD electrolytic caps located on the PCB bellow the drives going bad.
I decided to check every single cap on that machine with my ESR/capacitance meter.
All the caps on the power supply board were found OK.
On the green PCB that hosts the back panel audio connectors all the caps were found OK except a visibly bulging Licon capacitor that is located next to the relay, so I replaced that cap.
Then, very carefully removed the 2 optical drives. You should try to remove the 2 CD drives and the PCB bellow them all together as 1 piece and not do as I did. There are flex cables bellow the optical drives that make it very difficult to work while the PCB and the drives are still inside the device.
Anyway, after carefully disconnecting the flex cables and removing the optical drives, I checked every SMD electrolytic capacitor with my ESR meter and found several of them to be bad, most of them totally open! I am really grateful that none of them leaked electrolyte on the PCB.
I decided to replace the caps with used capacitors I have pulled out of other machines, because the device is of no special value to me, economical or sentimental, so I didn't want to spend money on the repair. I also replaced only the caps that were found bad upon testing in circuit. There is a chance that there might be more bad caps there but due to being connected in parallel with other caps, the ESR meter was not able to detect it.
If your unit is important to you, it's better to try to replace all the capacitors on that board, using caps from known Japanese manufacturers rated for 105C, general purpose or entry level low ESR and definitely not ultra low ESR as that might detune the circuit. I used a mix of 85C and 105C capacitors that I first tested to make sure they didn't go bad in storage. Total number of caps replaced: 14
Number of caps left alone: 20
After the recap, reconnected everything paying attention not to damage the flex cables or break a connector.
Finally, I connected it to AC mains and made sure both drives now work without any issues!
The only issue that I found is that when I play extremely scratched CDs I get audible jitter, mainly on the repaired drive but also on the recorder drive on some occasions.
I attach some before and after pics of the repair for reference
