[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

I had two of the better machines offered in 1986, a Panasonic and a GE with 4-head and stereo HiFi sound. I still have the Panny but scrapped the GE.

Panasonic VCRs and their counterparts labeled GE, Magnavox, Sylvania, Penneys, etc. were workhorses thru the 90's and had only two main issues that I recall. Dirty heads and worn idler pulley-wheels. I was always able to easily find the idler pulley, which was a common failure. The first clue is when the machine plays but does not wind tape back onto take-up reel when ejecting.
Unfortunately, my two developed other issues not so easily solved. I see these for a few bucks at GW, SA and used thrift stores and wonder if there is hope.

The Panasonic appears to have a dirty head and would not respond to the usual swabbing with Freon TF. I'm glad I kept it in light of some great threads found here which discuss the fingernail trick among other methods. I will need to pull it out and try something else.

The GE lasted over 20 years and developed what may have been a PS issue, though I did not check for high-ESR capacitors before scrapping it. At first, it would shut off only when programmed to timer record. The unit would take the program allright, then come on at the right time, begin to record then just shut off as if unplugged. Later on, it started doing this when manually recording. At the end it just would not even respond when the play button was pressed.

I just picked up a Panasonic-built GE. I think the date on the back states 1985 or so. It still uses a counter instead of the time-elapsed display. No on-screen displays at all. It looks like a low-hours unit. It's the only one that plays my el-cheapo Madacy or Goodtimes videos of the WW2. The newer ones I have are always trying to auto-track to compensate for poor recording quality and are impossible to use. This one uses a manual tracking adjustment.