Great player very sought after, even Thorsten Losech of AMR fame told me he wished he keep his one, they’re that good. Connect it direct into a poweramp using the digital domain volume control that’s in it, and forget about a preamp.
Random ticks can be the laser not error correcting small scratches/warps, also rapid fire ticks, and if bad sometimes the music refuses to progress at all it just gets stuck. 200hrs sounds a short time yes, but also just being left switched on certain cdp’s can use up laser life. Lasers them selves also have a very small rubber suspension system that ages/decays and can sag over time even without use.
Yes the laser/mech is a Philips CDM12.10 if your handy they aren’t that hard to change the whole laser/mech. Just laser is harder. And they’re cheap enough to do if you do it yourself.
There may be a protective antistatic ribbon cable solder bubble you have to unbridge, but I think not, as the end of the ribbon cable looks like it has metal clamp for a protective short, that has to be removed before pushing it into the main board.
Cheers George