Show Us Your Vintage Rotating Heads
 

Here is my 1981 Sony SL-2500 Betamax. 20 pounds 12 ounces, all metal construction. I currently use it for archiving. I love these old machines. Show us what you got.

Here's mine
 

This is the FIRST VCR manufactured in Brazil ( 1983 ), it is the Philco model PVC 1000.

Here's my RCA SelectaVision VCT 400 manufactured July 26, 1978. It weighs in at just over 38 lbs.


[IMG]http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/u...ofDSC_0924.jpg[/IMG]



This unit has seen a LOT of use over the years (as you can see by all of the wear and tear), but was finally retired about 5 years ago when it developed a motor speed problem.

It served me well over the years.

Bob

Very nice!!!:thmbsp:

Two fun reel-to-reel monochrome oldies:

1972 Sony AV3400, 1/2" tape, 5" reels... picture1
1966 Ampex VR660, 2" tape 12.5" reels... picture2

jr

A-m-a-z-i-n-g!!!
 

Were those intended for home use???

"Were those intended for home use???"

No, I don't think that they were intended for home use, although some may have ended up in homes.

The Sony "portapack" was popular with sports coaches, golf swing experts, schools, industry and perhaps a few home movies were made with these machines.

The Ampex was semi portable... about 95 lbs, but with a handle on both ends, likely was used by some tv stations to record remote events.

I remember reading once that Hugh Hefner had a 2" Tape, quad head color Ampex at his home, in days before VHS and Beta. :yes:

jr

My Sony U-Matics. Sony VO-9800 (top) and BVU-950 in action.

Those are some realy coool video recorders
 

Those are some realy cooool video recorders:banana:
I got a circa 1972 Panasonic U-Matic video recorder for home use with the original wired remote-huge and yes, it's got both VHF-ch 2-13 and UHF-ch 12-69 tuners. Also got 4 Sony SL-7200 Betamaxes from 1976 w/original K-60 Betamax tapes as well:-) 2-inch video tape is really cool:-)

LabGuy says that a simplified model of the Ampex 660 *was* intended for home use...

http://www.labguysworld.com/Ampex_VR-1500.htm

jr

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...H5100QWVCR.jpg

My Quasar VH5100. Still kickin' after all these years. I run it from time to time to keep the belts loose.

But the George Foreman grill in the background gets LOTS more use. So does the RCA 8-X-541 radio.

Brian

In '72 shouldn't that UHF tuner go to 83? I thought it was early 90's that the UHF band was cut to 69. I could be wrong...

I've gotten hold of from a guy in Queensland Australia, a couple of early 70s home movies recorded on an early 70s Sony EIAJ standard reel-reel portapack VTR. The recordings date from 1971 to about 1973 and were done in New Zealand when he lived there, the tapes transferred successfully and the pictures were mostly in great quality. A good mix of footage of family videos and segments of New Zealand TV show footage recorded via the vidicon camera pointed to the TV screen, one of the recordings was some footage of the Bee Gees In Concert circa 1971 which I've uploaded to YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO2AxOF20mw . So yep some people did own portapacks back then for domestic use of making home movies.

Here are some of my old video recorders I've collected over the past 7 years:

Philips N1512 VCR SP 1976
Philips N1700 VCR LP 1978
Grundig SVR-4004 1979
VCR tapes 1970s
Sony CV-2100CE 1967
National NV-3020E VTR 1973/74 (recently gave it back to the former owner as I now have a Sony AV-3620CE VTR to transfer reel-reel videos)

Nice decks!! Nice youtube video!!:thmbsp:

At one time, I had a VTR/VCR that was a transition between R-R and cassette machines. As I recall it was a National. The tape was contained in a small cassette with only ONE reel inside... when it was loaded the machine would thread itself around the heads and to take up reel (5"?)contained under the top cover of the deck. It was color. Do any of yours load that way?

jr

I found a picture of it, Lab guy has everything!

http://www.labguysworld.com/Panasonic_NV-5110.htm

It was more fun to watch the thing thread itself than the ONE cassette that I had.