When it was newly purchased, it played very well with good sound reproduction in all the options, i.e., radio, cassette and CD.

Presently, at this date which is Sept. 2008, I saw and purchased a similar SONY portable model at WALMART for $49.87 which was for our local church prayer group. We conclude each weekly prayer session with a religious CD song. The leader of our prayer group has a similar SONY like my original one and it was acting up lately with the same characteristics as mine, hence I purchased a new one for our prayer group. (Nice gesture don't you think?)
The price was almost 'half' of what I paid for mine a few years back and its size and weight was smaller hence lighter than my originally purchased SONY.
ADVICE: Do not repair these portable players, purchase a new one.

Worked fine for a few years for the small amount of time I used it. It has fm/am radio, cassette tape player and recording a cassette from a CD, and CD player. However, now it can't 'find' a CD if inserted to play giving a "no disk" message. Also, the cassette player's controls all work but there is a 'throbbing' noise interference which doesn't allow one to clearly hear the cassette!
I'm surprized that such a reputable outfit like SONY continues to have this problem, since I read many similar reviews at various purchase sites where previous customer reviews are similar to mine.
The suggestion to purchase a 'lens cleaner CD disk' is worthless if your player won't play the CD which yields instructions on the remedy! At the SONY website, they want $90 to fix it with no guarantees! So I guess the best advice is to consider portable players like mine as 'throw away' items.
All I can use it for presently is the am/fm radio which works O.K.