Marantz CD7 Takes A Break, Copland CDA-822 To The Rescue.

My beloved Marantz CD7 takes break, not for too long, I hope.
Yes, my dear readers, the inevitable just happened and sooner than I had expected too. The transport and tracking laser assembly of my beloved work horse CDP, Marantz CD7 has given up the ghost! After more than 8 years of faithful service, it's decided to call it a day.

Most of my friends have been encouraging me to change or see an upgrade opportunity, and a group just suggested to me that it's time to give up on CD, and move on to music servers. There's 2 reasons why I need to restore the CD player to it's original working condition.

1) Whilst waiting for music servers to mature in terms of user interface and sound quality, I still need to rely on a CD player until the day I decide to take the music server route to hifi dom.

2) I really love the Marantz CD7 dearly for it's magical sound, and for all that I know, a relic of it's kind, the last and quite possibly, the best of the 16 bit machines. I am sentimentally attached to it too.

So if any one here reading can be so helpful to point me to contacts where I can get a complete Philips VAM1252 transport assembly, I'd appreciate your help very much.
I've tried many places and none can help me to source for one so far. And don't ask me to go to the local Malaysian Marantz distributor just yet. I've asked them and they are trying to help. I am still hoping they'll try harder.

In the mean time, the excellent Copland CDA-822 is called in to service, courtesy of Odiosleuth. Thanks man!
In the mean time, my dearest partner in crime, Odiosleuth as kind as ever, offered me the services of his standby CDP, the Copland CDA-822. So from here onwards, until the full restoration of the Marantz, all reviews will be covered with the Copland as the source. Sound wise, the Copland is just as musical as the Marantz, if it digs out even just very slightly more information from those antiquated 5 inch disc. The Copland does not have as low a noise floor as the current crop of top grade CD spinners. However, just like the Marantz, it was a truly formidable CD player for it's time.

In case you've missed out my plea earlier, please let me know if you've got contacts to source for the complete Philips VAM1252 transport assembly. Thanks for reading.