My CD player stopped working, saying check disc. Somewhere I saw to use an old disc, glue some cloth pieces on it-I used alcohol swabs), cut them as short as I could. Got it to go in the player, but the same error message came up. Do I need a new player?

 

Most likely. There's several common problems with these radios, and mechanical failure of the CD reader is a pretty big one. There's fairly easy fixes for the electrical failure (if you're comfortable with electronics repair), but mechanical read failure is one I haven't seen a fix for.

If the rest of the radio works fine, I'd recommend doing an AUX adapter, but with your existing radio failing, putting money into something that requires your existing radio to keep working is possibly a bad investment. Going aftermarket for the radio is a definite fix, but starts at about $350 to do it yourself with an entry-level radio.