Am I nuts?

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!

Not necessarily, I have a Sony CDP-2700 that has a born on date of January 1996.  It was my daily driver until just a few weeks ago when I relegated it to my second system. Nothing wrong with it, I wanted a remote.

All the best.

JD