How reliable is your Arcam Diva CD73T?

[7.5ips]

This morning I cleverly walked into the open drawer of the circa 1990 Sony CDP-M77 I've been using ever since my Marantz CD-53 decided it didn't want to play CDRs any more. Consquently, buying a new CD player has shot up to the top of my priority list, and given the seemingly universal plaudits it's been receiving, I've been considering an Arcam Diva CD73T.

This evening, whilst talking to my sister, it emerged that her boyfriend's CD73T reacted very badly to being left alone for a fortnight whilst they went on holiday, and on their return refuses to play certain discs, the display reading "No Disc". A posting on audioreview.com suggests that at least one other CD73T has been similarly temperamental. A friend has a long history of Arcam CD player ownership, but on his first the laser wore out after three years' use and was uneconomic to replace, and his second was destroyed by a thunderstorm (which I concede is hardly Arcam's fault!).

My question is this: should I be concerned about these reliability problems when buying my next player (which might send me towards a more expensive player like a Roksan Kandy - my local dealers don't seem to stock any dedicated CD players priced between the two), or have I made contact with the worlds' only owners of unreliable Arcam kit? Your comments would be much appreciated.

[johndon]

Never had any problems with the any of the Arcam gear I own which is:

CD73
AVR300
P90
DV79
DT91

I've had the 300 & 79 almost since the day they were released (in fact the 79 was the dealers demo unit) - all 100% reliable so far.

John

[rosswf]

Just had my CD73T back from Arcam - it also had developed the 'No Disc' error so obviously a faulty optical drive.

It's 18 months old, so I was pretty disappointed, but fair play to Arcam - they honoured the 2 year warranty, and really went to town on repairing it, replacing quite a few other components as well and giving it a thorough servicing. I got the engineer's report back with a list of all work done.

To be honest, I think I may be partly responsible for the fault. Most of the discs I play are CD-Rs, and these seem to be more of an effort for the optical drive to read than pressed CDs (maybe due to the the lower reflectivity???? but I'm no technical expert).

I noticed from the report that a couple of the components had been swapped for different ones with different parts numbers - perhaps earlier versions of the CD73T like mine had problem parts that have now been sorted? Only speculation though.

I run this with an FMJ A22, and would happily buy Arcam again.

[Crustyloafer]

If you want extra peace of mind you could always go for the FMJ range CD36 which comes with a 5 year warranty.