Has my Meridian 506 become an expensive door stop?

A couple of years ago I purchased a used Meridan 506 CD player for a fairly reasonable price. At first it worked fine and sounded great, but a few months later it began having difficulty reading and sometimes tracking discs. About a year and a half ago I contacted Meridian about getting it fixed and got a general estimate to replace the drive (or whatever the black-box fix was). At the time I wasn’t in the best shape financially so decided to live with it for the time being.

Recently I decided to have it taken care of and called again to get a repair authorization from Meridian. The rep informed me that parts are no longer available for the 506. (Goddamn designed obsolescence!) However, if I sent it in they could “grease the chassis”. Uh... well, I’m highly mechanically skilled, so I took the thing apart and did it myself. There wasn’t much to do (though getting it apart was an adventure), and I chose not to disassemble the laser mechanism. (The way the guy talked, the “lube job” would be of the transport and not the laser drive itself anyway.)

It didn’t noticeably change anything, and it’s continuing to get progressively worse. So what now? Is there anything I can do with this? Is there anywhere else besides Meridan itself that might have parts? Though I do enjoy quality sound I’ve always been on a very tight budget. (Most of my system is “hand-me-downs”.) I’m also reluctant to toss something that can be repaired (within reason).