Educate me please

Well in my experience over many Cd players, it is NOT the actual transport laser going. it is a capacitor. Just no one wants to bother replacing or even finding which $0.20 small cap is dying on the laser control board.
That is just my take on it all, and your experience may vary.
Just replacing ALL the small (read tiny) caps in the whole area controlling the laser sled and the laser is good.
Just my 2 cents.

Dump it. Buy an oppo 95. It is not cost effective to hunt for the defect, if you could find a competent tech, which is highly unlikely. If you find one, Elizabeth's idea of a quick global replacement of the caps is a great idea, assuming you have the schematic with the parts list.

saki70 ... you must have skipped class the day we discussed the 3 most common failures a CD player can experience

The first is Spindle Motor failure ... when the motor gets tired and slows down or stops/expires .. the laser can no longer lock on to or read the TOC (data stream) and will display a ... “NO DISC” or “ERROR” message in the display

The second is when the capacitor in the laser power supply gets weak or fails the power supply isn’t energized and again the laser can’t read the TOC and throws a “NO DISC” or “ERROR” message in the display

The third and most likely your problem is when the factory lubricant on the rails that the laser sled rides on dries up from years of use ... it creates hard spots ... lumps of dried up lubricant

When the laser hits one of these dry spots it stalls momentarily and loses lock with the TOC ... once the laser drives past the dried lube it regains lock with the TOC and plays normally until it hits another dry patch

The fix is easy ... just clean the rails that the laser rides on of the dried factory Lube. and reapply the some lube

If you don’t want to attempt this yourself take it to a reputable repair or service center and ask them to clean the laser and re-lube the rails .... if you tell them the player is skipping ... they will want to replace the whole transports assembly to CTA and they make more money installing complete assemblies vs cleaning and lubing players

You do not need a factory trained tech or send it back to the factory ... just a reputable local electronics repair shop should be able to handle it

Not sure if you can post links to retailer so if you or anyone else reading this contacts me at ... davehrab(AT)charter(DOT)net I can give you a link to a very good synthetic lube used for this purpose

Soon the Student will be the Teacher

Good question, I also had to replace the transport in a 5K unit while my $189 Oppo plays on without a glitch. Fortunately, in many players, replacing the entire transport is pretty cheap and easy. I did it myself and I'm no tech.

saki70 ... you must have skipped class the day we discussed the 3 most common failures a CD player can experience

ha, ha, ha, ha!! LOL, indeed! I see, Dave, that you are back (from the Depths of Mordor).
BTW, I still have those ESP Essence power cords I bought from you & I remember your sarcastic but good natured sense of humour! ;-)