Hi, I have been thinking of acquiring a Bryston BCD-1. Does anyone know whether or not Bryston is still able to service them?
I don't play a lot of CDs these days, but I really like the build quality of my BDA-3.14 and would like to add a Bryston CD player to my system. Also, I don't feel that I play enough CDs to warrant spending what a BCD-3 costs.
I would appreciate hearing any thoughts or opinions.
Thank you.
No, don’t do it.
I wouldn’t even recommend buying a new one and for a very simple reason – Bryston, like all other boutique manufacturers, isn’t known for making CD players. They might make a fine sounding player but ultimately, the essential components that do make for a CD player – components like the CD mechanism – are made by someone else. In the case of BCD-1, the mech was made by Philips, while the company was still regarded as high-tech and had research facilities dedicated to development and manufacturing of laser technology. In other words, Bryston, like Krell, Lyngdorf etc. has neither knowledge nor experience to repair mechanism like that. They likely aren’t even familiar with the intricacies of its inner workings. They needn’t be because Philips, like Sony or whomever it was that made the mech, would provide them with a detailed datasheet of how to interface the rest of the electronics with the mech. As long as the mech is working perfectly, all is fine. When it is not, Bryston, Krell or whomever it is will not be able to provide any support. At that point, you will be ‘on your own’, trying to find a skilled specialist to repair your precious bit of kit.
The hassle is, the Philips drive used in the BCD-1 is not at all a notable feature of that player. Let me give you an example. The entire Technics range of CD players, costing from 125 to 400 USD were made in Germany, from around 1998 onwards, using the same Philips mechanism. It was regarded as reliable and long-lasting but ultimately, nothing to get excited about. Matsushita, the then-parent company of Technics, is an enormous industry so even the basic 125 USD player worked flawlessly for many years. The same mech was also used by Densen, a Danish boutique manufacturer, and their players would break frequently. You’d spend one day a week listening to it and then the remaining six days repairing it. Take that as you will, but in this analogy, Bryston would be Densen, not Matsushita.
There’s one more thing I’d like to address. Precisely because the Philips mechanism in question is a mainstream mech, finding a skilled specialist, or even a former Philips employee would be exceedingly difficult because they’d consider the mech as something not really worth the effort.
Cheers,
Antun
