Kyocera DA-01, 1st gen CD Player

The Kyocera CD player I got on eBay arrived, and it's works as well as the seller claimed. What is amazing is this is a 1st generation CD player - circa 1983 - and it's able to play CDR's! That is practically unheard of.

I'm running the Kyocera in my test system:

* Yamaha C-80 pre-amp
* Yamaha B-2x amp
* Energy Veritas 2.4i speakers


The Kyocera sounds good - it's quite nice for a CD player of that vintage. I have a fondness for the 1st generation CD players.

I haven't cleaned it up yet:

that is a very cool player, glad to hear its working well.

Thanks Scott - I agree, it is cool. The one on The Vintage Knob doesn't have wood side panels:

DA-01 on The Vintage Knob

how heavy is that CDP? just curious is all.

The DA-01 weighs 18.2lbs.

That is very nice. I did a little research and it seems that it and some of the lower model Kyoceras of the time can play CDR. I'm going to need to try my DA-910 with some other CDR's. The wood panels really dress it up. Don't have 'em on mine.

Very nice unit and find. Kyocera was a bit of a rarity, making beautiful looking gear with excellent build quality.

- JP

Congrats! It looks beautiful!

Glad to hear it's not plagued by any problems.

I wish you decades of good luck with it!

A few pics after cleaning it up a little bit. It has an interesting serial number.

Definitely very cool.

- JP

Kyocera not only made quality equipment under its own brand name, but a lot of stuff under other names too. Many ADC and dbx pieces of gear were made by Kyocera, and all that were were of exceptional quality. All of the Japanese-made dbx sound processing equipment from the early to late 80's were made by Kyocera, as well as ADC's first generation CD player, and dbx's second-generation unit with dbx processing built in. The ADC player was one of note: the first "cheap" player ever introduced ($199.95, when all others were $299.95 and higher), it was a rock-solid, albeit feature-bereft unit that many radio stations wound up using as "filler" when their higher quality units crapped out and had to be repaired. Though the little ADC unit didn't sound quite as good as the costlier units, it was a gem for its price point.

Well here is my Kyocera DA-01 in excellent condition. It's fully operational and plays without a hitch! Not as refined as my current Marantz gear or some of my Nakamichi's, but thats not why I like old Muscle Cars either!





BTW, I don't know how the Serial Number series worked with these, but Mark B might have the #1 released in the States!

Regards,
TB

The Kyocera is one of my favorite CD players. It doesn't have the detail of later TOTL CD players, but it is musical and doesn't have the digital edginess of some early generation CD players. The only 1st gen CD player that I like as much as the Kyocera DA-01 is the Yamaha CD-1. One thing I found surprising was that the Kyocera had no problem playing CDR's.