SONY MiniDisc Recorder/Player - MDS-JE520 (Pannal HG2)

For any recording enthusiasts out there, this is a digital MiniDisc recorder from about 1999.

It comes with:

- Analog (RCA) and Digital (Co-ax and optical SPDIF) inputs/outputs.
- Headphones socket (6.35 mm).
- A box of about 80 MiniDiscs - 8 of which are blank and still wrapped in cellophane.
- For the other ~70 discs, you're unlikely to enjoy my selection of (mostly rock) music, but the great thing about MiniDiscs is that you can record over them!
- User manual
- Remote control
- Spare RCA cable for connection to an amplifier

If you're young, you won't care about any of this because you'll just trust the big corporations and will happily stream all your music from them without worrying about their ability to lock you out, or monitor your music-listening habits!

However, if you're of a certain vintage and store your music collection on good old CDs (or even vinyl) then this device could be useful as a means of recording compilations or extracting highlights e.g. taking the best 3 minutes of a 6-minute song (the one with that awful self-indulgent drum solo at the end).

The recorder works fine (I've just been using it to transfer a load of old recordings to MP3, which is why I no longer need it), but there are a few provisos:

1. Be gentle with the slot where you insert the MiniDisc otherwise it's easy to get a disc jammed.

2. The AMS knob on the front has a poor contact and doesn't always register when you turn it, so it may skip tracks when you're trying to locate a particular song. However, you can use the remote control for choosing songs, which works very well.

3. The manual is actually for a slightly earlier version (the MDS-JE500) so it's not 100% accurate, but most of it is fine. You can find a version for the JE520 online if you need it.

I hope someone can make use of this, otherwise it's going up to the recycling centre!
If you'd like it, please let me know your plans for it.