"BEST USED" CD player or players at about $1000

REGA Saturn
REGA Apollo

before asking seeking advice, it is a good idea to have some personal experience, with respect to cd players.

have you auditioned any players in your price range ?

there is no substitute for your own ears.

if you have listened to any players in your own system, have you formed any opinions about them ?

your question is open ended, without some input from you as to your preference for performance with respect to a wide range of variables.

check onkyo c-7030. you can get it for less than $200 'new'!! great transport, large transformer, re-clocks, etc..

My vote is for the Cambridge Audio 840. I have been using one for a couple of years, and was feeding the digital outputs to my Bryston BDA-1.

I recently purchased a PS Audio PWT to replace it, but feeding both to my Bryston and A/B'ing has shown me just how good the Cambridge Audio is. The brightness some folks complain about is in their analog output stages and is absent when you use digital outputs fed to a good D/A. It was so close to the PWT I almost sent the PWT back, but decided to keep it because the PWT will play high res .wav files and the Cambridge won't. The PWT was also a bit better at resolving detail, but not by a huge margin.

Most folks don't also realize the Cambridge is one of the few players that will output upsampled digital to 24/192 as well as the native 16/44.4.

If most of your music is standard CDs, you can't go wrong with the Cambridge. It sells for around $800-900 in very good used condition.

If I were you, I would be looking for an Exemplar or Modwright modified player. These are typically sold for not much money these days, as the modders move on to work on newer players. And many audiophiles upgrade to the newer ones, and sell their older modded players. I have a Denon 3910 modified by Exemplar. I tried the Oppo 95 (fully broken in) in my system, and it was no contest (in favor the modified Denon).

Good luck!