ribbon cable repair?

[TC Chris]

In a moment of genuine stupidity (as opposed to fake stupidity) I was removing CD player transport to replace the belt and managed to break the flat ribbon cable that supplies everything to the laser mechanism. The traces are TINY and there are lots of them. I had wondered about one of those conductive-ink pens but the traces are really too small.

The ribbon cable appears to be a proprietary item. Any suggestions for a fix or a work-around?

Or maybe somebody has a parts machine for an old Technics SL-P310 player?

Chris Campbell

[CoogarXR]

Is it broken the whole way across?

If not, I have taken an exacto knife and scraped the coating off broken traces and bridged them with a strand of wire and solder.

If it is broken completely, you probably would have to find an exact replacement.

[TC Chris]

Yeah, it's completely broken off, a nice clean break where the thing makes a right-angle turn. I'm not sure what the plastic substrate is--some sort of translucent yellow film.

There's nothing more frustrating than fixing something and making it worse but a dumb move.

Chris