My CDJ800 MKI died again

My CDJ800 MKI died again

Hello everybody,

I was mixing, doing a quick forward on a track with my CDJ800 MKI, when the player had hard time reading the CD. I ended ejecting it out to put another one, but after about 20 secondes of trying to reading it while making hardcore noise the CD came out.

Now, the player can’t read any CD, burnt or original. It tries to read it for 20 secondes, the sound the laser make while moving is scary, and then the CD is ejected.
I open the CDJ, clean it, clean the lense with alcohol but nothing changed.

The weird thing is : I had the exact same issue almost 3 years ago. I had to change the laser block. I guess I gonna do the same this time but I’m quite confused. It’s only been 3 years and I’m not using the player that much (5h a week is a record). Can it really be the laser which died again? How can I diagnose that?

I’ve read it can be related to laser alignment but I found almost nothing about it. On a old thread I’ve read that MKI laser are automatically adjusted by the player.

So, is it really the laser? There’s nothing I can do about it?

the 800mk1 laser assemblies are cheap as chips (like £30ish on ebay), easy to install yourself and they self calibrate.

Yes I know, that’s what I already did 3 years ago.
I’d just like to know why the laser died again so quickly.