Sony MZ-E30

[BearBoy]

So whilst we’ve been on sabbatical, I picked up a few new MiniDisc related items.

First up is a bit of a nostalgia purchase. Back in 1997 I dived into the world of MiniDisc by buying an MDS-JE500 deck, which is still going strong, and an MZ-E30 portable player, which sadly got stolen from a pub in Holborn around 2001.

I’ve been keeping half an eye open for an MZ-E30 ever since getting back into MiniDisc but kept talking myself out of it as it doesn't have MDLP or Group function, uses an older form of ATRAC etc.

Anyway, I came across a nice looking one on eBay for a reasonable price and my resolve wavered.

The seller mentioned that audio was only coming out of one of the earphones but I wasn’t unduly concerned as I would have used my own anyway. The only slight worry would have been if the issue was with the remote, rather than the earphones, but I decided to take a chance and went ahead and bought the player.

Player turned up and looked great:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I encountered a problem. I had completely forgotten that the remote that comes with the MZ-E30 (RM-MZE50MP) doesn’t have the normal 3.5mm headphone connecter but instead uses a smaller “micro plug”:

Okay. So I needed some sort of adapter. I found the Sony part number, PC-MP1S, and started trying to track one down. Easier said than done. Found one on eBay but the seller wanted over £100 for it (there’s one on there now for £113.99 ….)

In the meantime, I tested the player and everything seemed to be working okay. The remote seemed functional, although I couldn’t test the audio, and the player sounded fine with the remote bypassed. It also worked okayish with some of my later remotes (IIRC some of the buttons did fairly random things).

Then, purely by chance, I came across a post on the r/minidisc Reddit where some guy in Hong Kong was selling PC-MP1Ss for a much more reasonable price. I bought one from him (he has dozens by the sounds of things) and, hey presto, one fully functional MZ-E30 with original remote :-)

The player also came with an original Sony NH-14WM gumstick battery. I fully expected this to be useless tbh but, to my surprise, it works absolutely fine.