Audio Systems: Panasonic CQ-C1121U Skipping, warm water rinse, panasonic cq

Question
I have a Panasonic CQ-C1121U car stereo with CD, etc.  It is just over a year old and up til now was a good stereo.

Just recently, it skips when playing back a CD.  Almost like a scratched CD.  Very random.

Do you think this is a faulty stereo or needs cleaning or ?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob

Answer
There are many causes of skipping - or, technically it is what we call drop out due to a loss of digital data over such a long period of time the internal error correction circuitry cannot compensate for it.

The causes of such are:

- dirty discs or scratches on the surface
- defective discs from the disc maker
- dirty lense over the laser diode
- weak laser diode
- defective digital converter inside the set
- badly or misaligned optical pickup (which houses the laser diode)
- condensation over the lense - which goes away after warm up - usually

There are other causes as well.

TO clean the discs use mild dish soap in warm water; rinse with cool, clear water and drip/air dry on the dishrack.

To clean the lense use a cotton q-tip and flick the surface of the lense a few times.

However, all that being said, the most common cause is a weak laser diode.  Replacement is very expensive because the entire optical pickup assembly must be replaced and realigned. It is often as much or more than the cost of a new player!  Sorry for the bad news on that.

So, try the cleaning routines on the lense and the discs and see what happens.  Let me know if you need further help.
Cleggsan