Quote:
Originally Posted by waltchan
I disagree, and I'm tired of techs telling me repeatedly Hitachi VCRs were the most-reliable. They're not at all. They liked them only because they made a lot of money from them on service, while customers were never pleased seeing that. They wished they bought a different brand. That's not what reliability means. People could have avoided going through this belt-change procedure and goo-cleaning mess if Hitachi designed a chassis using fewer belts in the first place, along with standard direct-drive capstan motor. Instead, they cut costs in production using multiple pulley motors with more belts in it, along with some of the stupidest Japanese engineers I've seen working for Hitachi. They finally caught that belt problems too late in 1987, and immediately changed the chassis to one-belt starting in 1988, but it still had multiple common problems. Hitachi didn't actually build a really reliable VCR until after 1993 or so until 2000 with the Hi-Fi models, while all the mono models were made by Funai.
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Evolution/progress changed the deck to the one-belter. JVC and Toshiba tried the direct drive solution first, but they were noisy and got noisier as they wore out.
I remember only Sanyo/Fisher units with belts that would goo up, save for the older-than-dirt top loaders stored in closet for 25+ years. I've got one of my own, a 5-hour project for sure.
RCA made a huge wrong turn though - we serviced far more of the newer RCAs than the old Hitachi RCAs, once the belts were replaced (after 4 years, typically....) I was recently given an RCA that I serviced in 1990 - still works! Nothing but the belt kit and idler have ever been replaced.
Later RCA VR-XXX VCRs were very famous for the bad power supply diodes (replaced them with 1N4004's per the SPS that RCA issued) and later when they went to the Panasonic units, the whole switching supply module would go. As you may know, RCA preferred techs replace the whole module and avoid the cap , transistor, optocoupler and ICP kit solution. I once knew the whole RCA part number matrix for those VES/VESP switchers. There were 9 different Panasonic made supplies in all - RCA stocked 5 of them. I still have two NOS/NIB RCA units. They were strictly throw-away from Panasonic's view. We serviced them with the kits initially, but once we got an ESR meter, caps and the opto generally fixed them.
The worst to best, IMHO:
- Funai anything (NAP used their stuff, and we saw TONs) TV-VCR combos of any ilk - Panasonic Quasar doesn't escape this either..
- JVC/Zenith "Sun Gear" decks - Delrin gears that ate themselves if you looked at them wrong.
- Sharp decks with the drop-the-whole-timing-gear setup to replace the idler or tire. Sharp's replacement philosophy was replace the whole deck in an exchange for $39/dealer net.
- Early Panasonic/RCA piano key units with their 8/9-belt deck. Hour or so to replace the belts, and hunt for any problems you may have induced in moving the beast around. Good once fixed, but let the power go out....
- Sanyo Beta (early, with the Sony VP deck and the steel studs
that would break.)
- The later Toshiba units with the bad 78XX regulators, buried on a corner of the main board.
- Late Sony Beta and Beta-II decks - the loading timing was a pain.
- Panasonic/RCA/NAP '88-91 VES-###### switching power supply units that had the boards that would overheat. Obviously not made for the long haul. Sure, one belt, but the tape carriage was fragile, and the switching power supplies were crap.
- Late Sony SLV-N units. Cheap deck (Orion or Funai?) - we saw but a few, but what a cheapie. Other SLV-letter prefixed units were generally good.
- Samsungs - never the same problem twice. Memorex/Radio Shack units were the same deck, and timing switches, head-switching and bad heads plagued these.
- Sanyo/Fisher "FVH" units - belts, idlers, and the tuning voltage resistor that was buried in the unit.
- RCA/Hitachi VKT/VLT decks - replace the usual suspects, and you never saw them again, save for bad or dirty heads.
- Late Hitachi units - I still have the owners manual for the one I bought.
- Sony SLV 6XX and 7XX series 4-head units. Mostly saw only dirty heads, although I had one with the oddest color problems. A CX-series chip replace (Sony upgraded it) and it was fixed. We saw a few with customer-induced problems such as broken drop-down doors, or the jog wheel broken off. The Navy Exchange, Circuit City and Sears here sold thousands of these at discounts, and we rarely saw them. They are now my daily driver, albeit only for transcribing to DVD....
We saw a lot more, and I'm leaving out some for sure. My brother serviced far more than I ever did. Heck, we even serviced a Technics Audio deck that used a VCR tape - remember those?
When dad closed up shop after 30+ years, he had a VCR junkyard of units that was telling of the reliability.....50% or more were Sharp/Samsung/JVC and Sanyo stuff. Surprisingly, we got $1/pound at the scrap metal place for VCRs if the cover was intact.
YMMV/all opinions highly respected - we all served different markets and clientèle.
Anyone that serviced VCRs in the golden years is gold to me
- many shops avoided them altogether.....