Am I nuts?

*L*  Call me the Dr. Strangelove of the Lone Speaker, Frank N. Stein of the Loveless Transducers....sans the tesla coils and lightning bolts and things that glow in an undesired fashion... ;)

rip all your CDs to FLAC, get a good DAC, and move on!  CDs are fragile and so are transports.

I paid a bit for a Conrad-Johnson edition McCormack UDP-1 Deluxe recently and what it revealed musically was worth the risk. Maybe it is a gamble, but aren’t most of your purchases in this hobby? Go for it and enjoy!

1. Do you have a very large cd collection?

Yes - find a used cd player or low cost new one

No - buy a streamer/DAC and subscribe to a streaming service for $10 a month.

I'm guessing it's an early Audio Research? In that case, there are many other possible candidates out there. Don't get me wrong, I'm an ARC fanboy. 😉 But you simply can NOT get lasers for the early ones anymore...

In fact, I'm hoping I can still get an Accuphase DP-90 repaired!