Should Stackers skip?

[Rusty Holden]

I Bought a Sony head unit with the 10stacker, the bloke i bought it off reckons it all worked perfectly well and the only reason for the sale was because of a full system upgrade.
The stacker is about 4 years old (guess), does this happen over time?
or I will admit, i mounted the dam thing quite sloidley with torx bolts and locktite after ive already had car sound system stolen before. Thought this would be ok seeing though they are spring loaded or something?
The CD skips on the tinyest of bumps! And the car has stock susp.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dave,

[bike_boy]

Nah shouldnt skip

[tandy ass]

The Sony stackers do have a common problem of skipping, there are four gel filled rubber condoms inside the stacker that insulate the mechanism from the chassis to avoid bumps from causing it to skip. There is an updated part is available from Sony spare part resellers which greatly improves the ability of the stacker to absorb shocks and track the CD properly.

On the other hand, the optical pickup block could be on its way out, incapable of tracking the disc properly. Optical pickups have the focal lens suspended on a wire suspension, Sony have a long history of collapsed suspension so the lens sits at the base which reduces the ability to track the CD should a sharp bump occur. You may find that if you install the stacker vertically (and, using a large flat screwdriver, rotate the arrows on the sides of the stacker to point up) that it will almost eliminate the skipping due to the suspension collapse having negligible effect.

Do not, under any circumstances, in any CD player, ever use a lens cleaning CD, they are a sure fire way to destroy your optical block.

Cheers

[Rusty Holden]

Thanks for that, It is in fact mounted vertically, and im 99% sure i remembered to turn the arrows pointing up. I suppose replacing either of the parts you mentioned would probably be not worth it ($$$ wise?)

[tandy ass]

Replacing the black rubber gel filled condoms is worth it, problem is there's not much method of knowing if it's the new or the old type, from memory they look identical.

If the arrow is not pointing up then that'll most likely be the reason it's skipping.

On the other hand, are you using CDR's? If so, try burning them at a slower speed such as 2x or 4x to see if that improves reliability and make sure you're using 74 minute CDs instead of 80 minute ones.

[Rusty Holden]

Actually, the CDR (unsure of speed, a DJ mate gave it to me) i've been listening to doesnt skip nearly as much as what genuine CDs! Hopefully i just forgot the arrow things. I'll check in the morning. If thats not the case, i'll take further action. Do you know where i can get these parts Bozz? Thanks alot fot your help BTW...