"BEST USED" CD player or players at about $1000

before asking seeking advice, it is a good idea to have some personal experience, with respect to cd players.

have you auditioned any players in your price range ?

there is no substitute for your own ears.

if you have listened to any players in your own system, have you formed any opinions about them ?

your question is open ended, without some input from you as to your preference for performance with respect to a wide range of variables.

check onkyo c-7030. you can get it for less than $200 'new'!! great transport, large transformer, re-clocks, etc..

My vote is for the Cambridge Audio 840. I have been using one for a couple of years, and was feeding the digital outputs to my Bryston BDA-1.

I recently purchased a PS Audio PWT to replace it, but feeding both to my Bryston and A/B'ing has shown me just how good the Cambridge Audio is. The brightness some folks complain about is in their analog output stages and is absent when you use digital outputs fed to a good D/A. It was so close to the PWT I almost sent the PWT back, but decided to keep it because the PWT will play high res .wav files and the Cambridge won't. The PWT was also a bit better at resolving detail, but not by a huge margin.

Most folks don't also realize the Cambridge is one of the few players that will output upsampled digital to 24/192 as well as the native 16/44.4.

If most of your music is standard CDs, you can't go wrong with the Cambridge. It sells for around $800-900 in very good used condition.

If I were you, I would be looking for an Exemplar or Modwright modified player. These are typically sold for not much money these days, as the modders move on to work on newer players. And many audiophiles upgrade to the newer ones, and sell their older modded players. I have a Denon 3910 modified by Exemplar. I tried the Oppo 95 (fully broken in) in my system, and it was no contest (in favor the modified Denon).

Good luck!

Thanks to all who responded since my last response on 5/23/12. Mrtennis chastized me for not supplying more info but I did not want to bore the members. In addition, he asked if I had "auditioned many players?? the opportunities to do so are slim. I live in the middle of Pacific ocean in a place called Hawaii. There are only two major high-end shops in Honolulu, whose CD player offerings are generally out of my price range. Therefore, I must depend on the goodwill of the AG brotherhood and professional reviews

Update for those who may be interested, I bought a modded Cambridge Audio 550 C player from a third party. The modds were done by Mapleshade Audio. So far, the evaluation process is not going well, but all the cards have not been played; I have about 70 hours on the unit, from mostly playing a CD on repeat.

I have reviewed some of low points of the evaluation process in ANOTHER THREAD in the "digital" category, and followed this thread. A few have responded to the older thread, and took me to the woodshed for a good beating because I "supposedly" fell for the hype and outrageous claims about the modded 55C made on Mapleshade website.
I just got tired looking for a new or very good used player and decided to give this CD player a shot

The modded 550C is in mint/new condition and I paid under $800 including shipping To its credit, the 550c offers lighting fast transient response, and black noiseless backgrounds which enhance its midrange transparency. However, it is less dynamic and provides less midrange detail than my former Rega Apollo. This could, I hope, be related to finding the right IC, and/or PC. I do like the quality of its construction and metal( no plastic here) full function remote; the controls are also quick acting It also has returned me to a front loaning drawer as opposed to Rega's annoying top loading door.

I guess it is better to be disappointed in the performance of $750 CD player than say a $1500-$1800 "used" but "current player" that retails for $2200-2500. Thanks for the comments and advice. Jimbo