Hi all, I recently got my hands on an LD-1100 second generation LD player. It's had some problems that I've managed to resolve, but I'm thinking I'll need some help for this last one: the laser is very, VERY temperamental. I've checked the laser with a white card, and it seems to be in good alignment. It has never successfully played a CLV disc, but in the event I can coax it into playing a CAV disc this is what I get:
The sound is coming from the last two mirrors and the lens constantly moving back and forth. I've checked to make sure the mirrors and lens are all clean, so I'm left thinking one of the following could be the reason for the problem:
1. the capacitors and other components have aged, thereby pushing some of the pot adjustments out of spec.
2. as there are missing screws, one of the previous owners tried to fix the machine by himself and adjusted the pots improperly
3. an IC has gone bad
Or of course, something else is wrong that I have no idea about because I'm not an expert! Please, if you can help or have any advice I'd be very grateful to hear it!
Interesting development, I've noticed that changing the disc's rotation speed seems to stop to constant screen blanking, leaving me with a stable black and white image with no audio. Disc is unresponsive to trick play controls, and my TV doesn't recognize it as an NTSC image.
The black and white picture makes sense since I'm changing the disc's RPM, as the chrominance portion of an NTSC signal is most sensitive to disc speed, what doesn't make sense to me is why the lens seems to act up only when the disc is spinning at the correct speed to properly recover the color and audio.
When it IS at the proper speed and starts blanking like in my earlier video, there's a flash of color RIGHT before it does so, and sometimes even audio. By the way, I've learned the little click sound that always seemed to accompany the screen going blank is actually from the lens resetting back to its default position, then coming back up.
I haven't gotten any results from tweaking pots related to focus and tracking though. 
Hi Galgo, welcome to the forum.
I can't help I'm afraid but I just wanted to reassure you that the lack of response to your request for help is not because the forum is rude or unhelpful, truth be told, there's very little if any experience with these laser players on here.
I dabbled with laser disc last year buying a number of 1st gen players without much success. Thus far I've only managed to get one partially working, albeit that player runs through the entire disc in about 1min, the laser sledge running at a ridiculous rate. I also have the same Pioneer player as you but I can't even get that to spin up.
Early this year I took in a mint VLP700 as part ex on a vintage TV I was selling. I'm expecting it to be no use like the other two, as these players are notorious for 'stuck mirror' syndrome. I've not got around to looking at it yet and will be hoping to be proved wrong, otherwise my only option is to keep plugging away at the player on speed and the LD1100 which defies my attempts to get it to spin up.
I decided to take a break and come back to them at a later date, refreshed. Sometimes it gets so you can't see the wood for the trees.
Good luck with yours and if you're interested here's the links to my players.
https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/community/vintage-vtr/1982-pioneer-ld-1100-laserdisc-pal/
https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/community/vintage-vtr/1982-philips-laservision-vlp-600/
There seems to be very little to no general servicing documentation for LD players anywhere.
Philips kept 'pushing' the players in various incarnations for a number of years, Pioneer of course picked up the mantle later, so it is not as though they only had a very short production run unlike the almost 'still born' capacitive disc formats (Teldec, etc..). I wonder if they had to be returned to the manufacturer for repair ? or at the very least selected authorised repair centres ? they also were not really that popular with the general public unlike VCRs due to the lack of recording facility so they were a niche market product and fairly rare compared to the VCR.
I myself only ever saw two machines (Philips) and both of these were later generations to Chris's machine as they both had solid state Lasers (like a bigger version of more modern CD players) and not the High voltage tube type, in fact at least one of them had two lasers, or at least two objective lenses and could play CDs as well, this one would play CDs but not the LD discs, the customer did not want spend much so I never really investigated it much, when attempting to read a LD the disc ran far too fast which was quite scary!!, I suspected the laser assy but not being familiar with this format wouldn't have put money on it either 😉
The second machine was a strange one as I think it was also a CDI machine (CD interactive) or at least it could play interactive discs, it had a built in modulator, scart and a few other outputs (digital sound/SPDIF etc..) this was an impressive sophisticated beast! with quite a complex on screen menu, and it was very complex inside and looked very expensive! I cannot remember what the exact fault was with this machine (long time ago) but if I recall I couldn't get any service information at all for it from any of the usual Philips agents (CHS, Willowvale etc.), my mate worked for a Philips dealer and he reckoned it might be a return to Philips job.
