A week or two ago my Arcam Delta 270 CD Player cd-drawer gave up the ghost leaving Stravinsky firmly locked inside the player! I eventually found the support number for Arcam (which has apparently been purposely well-hidden to avoid time wasters) and after talking to a very knowledgeable techie he was able to confirm what my google-searches had already turned up, that it was a threaded cog-wheel, so I ordered an £18 replacement.

All of which seemed good considering the original price of the player and IF this works.

The part arrived with cryptic instructions on a single sheet of A4, so I tentatively started to dismantle the beasty in line with the gospel according to Arcam. Quel surpris, the instructions didn’t 100% match reality which is often the way with these jobs. So there I was sat amid a sea of pieces of  paper each one dutifully annotated with the screw or bolt location and each one with a little heap of screws etc.

I reached the point where the entire innards were out on the table looking like a half-built PC; oh about step 8 of 10, when I discovered I needed a Torx screwdriver (star-shaped head to the uninitiated – that’d be me 30 minutes ago!) to get the final board out! I raced down (on the trusty velocipede) to purchase a set form the local DIY store, which did the job!

With the shiny new Torx screwdriver set at my disposal I got the thing completely apart and finally got to the cog – which fortunately WAS damaged (2 teeth missing) and removed it.

You cannot imagine the trepidation I felt as I re-assembled it; and now we came to the moment of truth. All back in one piece, plug it in switch it on and the drawer only works perfectly. Yay! But I only had sound out of the left channel. Definitely NOT Yay! 🙁

Somehow I kept my sanity long enough to try re-plugging the connections a few times in the back of the player and amp. and the left channel then sparked into life :-). Now re-united with my Firebird CD I decided to give Eva Cassidy: Fields of Gold a whirl and it was peachy!!!

So we’re done,  never realised how much I’d missed the old girl … and that bust cog  … has pride of place on my desk as a souvenir.