You guys should start a new topic on the Mitsubishi and Panasonic VCR... I've had a bunch of them recently that were a mess that I picked up at the thrifts.

I've got several Sony VHS machines that all had the same problem: There's an arm that physically pulls the tape out of the cassette and moves it in place at the capstan and pinch roller. The pivot bearing gums up. Once it's freed up, the machine works fine. Most of the time, I have to remove the pivot from its shaft to get oil in it.

One of these models is a SLV-900HF with a flying erase head that I paid $2 for at the thrift. I've got 9 machines like this... Each one cost a fortune when new. I have less than $30 in all of them. Remotes included with most of them!!!

Did many of those. Easy fix! After you put it back together you need to run a tape, look down at the A/C head guides with a flashlight, run the tape forward and rev search and fine-adjust that arm height with the nut to make sure there's no tape wrinkling at the top or bottom edges.

Another common failure on those decks is the plastic take-up arm gear on the bottom of the deck will crack, split in two, and then the tape won't load around the drum. I think the last one of those I did was on a SLV-R1000. Definitely a worthwhile investment for that customer.

Right. I should have mentioned the re-adjustment.

Thanks for the heads-up on the cracked gear. I never noticed that.

I just aquired yet another machine like the ones I mentioned earlier. This one looks brand new, and has the remote. What cha want to bet that the pivot arm is stuck?

Have a good day. I'm off to work, now!

A dark, distorted picture and distorted Hi-Fi audio are ALWAYS the surface-mount caps located at the bottom of the hybrid IC board, like I mentioned earlier. If you look at the video board with all the sticky glue on top, there's a green-color, small hybrid IC board soldered on top of the S-VHS video process board. If you look underneath the hybrid IC green board, you will see maybe 10-15 surface-mount caps. All need to be replaced.

Same thing as for the Hi-Fi audio board. There are about 15-30 surface-mount caps to check and replace on the green hybrid IC boards, two of them, all soldered onto the audio board.

This is a very time-consuming repair job, no easy work, but fixable. Yep, this problem is one of Panasonic's electronic aging issue, mostly found in S-VHS units. Without the S-VHS feature, like the AG-1820, you could have saved 50 surface-mount caps from going bad.

One thing to note, the hybrid IC boards were already discontinued, and repairing is now the only option.

Studio Sound Electronics preferred rankings...
 

I e-mailed Studio Sound Electronics, the largest online VCR part-store, on his opinion on 1980s to 1993 VHS VCR reliability, and he sent me this:

FEWER REPAIRS
<<<<<

• 01 -- Toshiba/RCA/GE/ProScan (most-reliable)
• 02 -- Shintom/Multitech/Toshiba
• 03 -- Funai/Symphonic/Multitech/TEAC/XR-1000
• 04 -- Panasonic/Quasar/Canon/GE/Magnavox/JCPenny/RCA/Sylvania
• 05 -- Sanyo/Sears
• 06 -- NEC/Marantz/Yamaha
• 07 -- Sharp/Montgomery Ward/Signature 2000
• 08 -- JVC/Zenith/Kenwood
• 09 -- Orion/Emerson/Broksonic/Sansui/TMK
• 10 -- Samsung/RCA/GE/Toshiba
• 11 -- Sony
• 12 -- Hitachi/RCA/GE/ProScan/Sears
• 13 -- Mitsubishi/MGA/Video Concepts
• 14 -- GoldStar/Zenith/LXI/JCPenny/Totevision/
• 15 -- Daewoo/Capehart/Daytron
• 16 -- Fisher (least-reliable)

>>>>>
MORE REPAIRS

Toshiba/RCA/GE/ProScan were the most-reliable, while Fisher was the least-reliable. Would all of you (as techs) find this (his rankings) more preferable and accurate?
.

Studio Sound Electronics preferred rankings...
 

1994-2005 VHS VCR reliability rankings:

FEWER REPAIRS
<<<<<

• 01 -- Sanyo (most-reliable)
• 02 -- Shintom/Toshiba/Sony
• 03 -- Fisher
• 04 -- Hitachi
• 05 -- Orion/Emerson/Broksonic/Sansui
• 06 -- Mitsubishi
• 07 -- Sharp/Admiral
• 08 -- Samsung/RCA/GE/Samtron/Toshiba
• 09 -- Panasonic/Quasar/GE/Memorex/RCA
• 10 -- Funai/Symphonic/Hitachi/Philips-Magnavox/Sylvania
• 11 -- Toshiba/RCA/GE/ProScan
• 12 -- JVC/Marantz/Philips-Magnavox
• 13 -- Sony
• 14 -- GoldStar/JCPenny/LXI/Allegro/Zenith
• 15 -- Daewoo/Audiovox/Emerson/Fisher/GE/RCA/Sanyo (least-reliable)

>>>>>
MORE REPAIRS

Sanyo was the most-reliable, while Daewoo/Audiovox/Emerson/Fisher/GE/RCA/Sanyo were the least-reliable. Would all of you (as techs) find this (his rankings) more preferable and accurate?
.

1988 Panasonic PV-S4880 S-VHS 4-Head Hi-Fi VHS VCR...
 

I'm servicing a 1988 Panasonic PV-S4880 right now. It needs a power supply caps rebuild, capstan-motor circuit caps rebuild, and video board surface-mount caps rebuild (photo #1).

Surprisingly, the Hi-Fi audio board use no surface-mount caps.

Ed in TX, this is what the video board looks like in the PV-S4880 with the surface-mount caps (photo #2). Your AG-1830 looks pretty much similar.

This is a fairly good listing.

Sony would be above Funai on my list.

Hmm. Sanyo at both ends of the list. Interesting...

Walt, I did a bunch of VCR repairs in the 1990s, for friends, but I never kept track of brands enough to remember now which ones I repaired the most. Two big exceptions to that, though: I never repaired any Panasonics or their clones despite seeing plenty of them, and I repaired every Fisher I ever saw, sometimes more than once.

I had to repair a Panasonic of mine, but it was mainly rubber parts that failed. This was a couple of years ago and it was an early 80's model.

I use a JVC digital VHS deck now, but I don't trust it lasting forever. It's loading mech kinda sucks.

That later list from 94 to 05 should have a few caveats. It is easy to see that many brands appear more than once, often at different ends of the spectrum. Mostly this will be due to a brand swapping suppliers of mechanism in this time, eg Sony did make their own but by 05 sourced their mechanism from Samsung, don't know which mechanism they rate as the better or worse (sometimes I have trouble working this out myself). And in the time before the Samsung mechanism Sony had a couple of different mechanisms of their own of varying complexity.
Philips went from Sharp to JVC to Funai in this time.
Keen eyes will spot that Funai drops significantly down this list, reading the wikipedia article says that about 1993 they dropped Shintom as their mechanism supplier and starter making their own (which is my opinion were diabolical, much worse than their pretty poor most recent mechanism) As you can see, Shintom stays high on the list.
Sanyo is a bit interesting here, did not like their own mechanisms much of this period, then they swapped to Daewoo and things got a little better I thought. The early Daewoo decks of this period are hard to keep going nw though.
JVC were a really mixed bag in this period too, with some good mechs and some not so good

Actually not much similarity. Much more use of modules soldered perpendicular to the top main board.


http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1337478584

The problem would be caps related at the S-VHS Pack C.B.A., Luminence and Chrominance C.B.A., Input Luminence/Chrominace Separator C.B.A., Audio Pack C.B.A., and Hi-Fi Audio Pack C.B.A. All five boards require checking and testing. There should be a hybrid IC with surface-mount caps (hidden underneath) hanging sideways mounted on the S-VHS Pack C.B.A. (two boards mounted sideways). All the surface-mount caps in it need to be changed.

After that, (you're not finished yet, despite the tired work), you also will need to check all the caps in the switching power supply, just in case, before you put the top cover back on.

Panasonic S-VHS units often can get really, really severe electronic issues, with repair costs easily exceeding up to 500% of the product replacement cost. :yes:
.

And then you'd only be about half way through it!

If I was going to go to the trouble to re-cap a VCR I would probably do one or both of my HR-S5800-HR-S6700 pair from JVC. Only difference between them is cosmetic. Those are/were really nice machines in their day. But on some of those modules hifi audio in particular SMD caps fail leak and take out tiny circuit traces with them.

Tell me where one can buy a brand new AG-1980.... that 500% figure is moot when the deck isn't made anymore.

Panasonic sure knows how to pack a deck with boards though (AG-1980 diagram below). They are nice enough to not even show the 3000 screws holding that mess together (not to mention the many capacitors that go bad).

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1337575944

Many times, repair cost more than buying one on eBay.

Unfortunately ebay units are a crapshot at best. These VCRs are 10-15 years old now, and many of them beat up and never serviced. Chances are whatever you buy will have bad caps anyway.

May need more NIB vintage JVC...
 

I may be (but not sure) interested in purchasing a second new-in-box vintage JVC VCR. Except for the 1982 HR-7650U that I already purchased, which one is likely the next best:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/m.html?_nkw=...ahand0&afsrc=1

Seller has 10 different vintage JVC VCR models. The next, closest good one may be the 1983 HR-D225U. I believe in the concept that the older the manufacturing year, the more reliable it will be. Can anyone verify?

There are three different mid-80s JVC chassis I can pick. Which one is the most reliable to you?

• 1982-1984: No picture available
  
• 1984-1986: http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/mbk-41.htm
  
• 1986-1989: http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/mbk-42.htm
  
• 1989-1994: http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/mbk-45.htm

Personally I'd go for the HR-D830. Yes they can have their problems, but they are all fairly easy fixes.

I hope you're kidding me. :no: I'm looking for the most reliable one, not the most easy-to-fix one. This model is NOT recommended by a tech in Studio Sound Electronics.

HR-D225 - :scratch2:
Some of the problems I've seen:

Broken gears #12, 13, 14 on the side of the "cassette housing" or FL ass'y.
IC201 FL drive burned out
IC1, IC2 photo-interruptors on the reel sensor board
Photo-transistors #31 on the FL ass'y
Cassette lid opener lever #47
Door opener gear #23 not fully opening the door after wear and fatigue, jams on eject
R and L front-load "insert" switches
Rec safety leaf switch
Tape UL, AL position leaf switches
Reel idler ass'y
Reel clutch
Head-switching relay RY1 on the head connection board
More belts too since it is DC motor-belt-flywheel capstan.

Yikes... So, would you rate the HR-D225U less-reliable than the HR-7650U? I may consider getting another HR-7650U as a backup if there isn't any one better.

What about the HR-D750U and HR-D180U? Are they better than HR-D225U?

I'm with Ed on the 830, i personally find that chassis of JVC quite reliable and very easy to work on. Actually they got easier to work on than the 830 in the later models, same mechanism, just mounted in the middle without a heap of circuitry on top of the mechanism to remove first.
My first VCR was a HRJ200, which uses this mechanism, it has been given a [B]lot[B] of use and has only given trouble once. Despite being a mono machine it is very very easy to program quickly for timeshifting, hence the lot of use.

They don't have as many hard to obtain parts as the older ones like the 225. 225 was made in 1983-84. 750-180 probably 1986-87 time frame.And I recall those do have linear power supplies and transformers. Rarely if ever a PS problem. My main issue with the 225 is not that it was so unreliable, it's the unique parts that did fail were not your general off the shelf components. We saw many of those and probably most of the things that fail in them. I could probably keep a HR-D830 going with less concern for some oddball gear or lever failing. A capacitor fail in the SMPS.. replace it! No biggie. A FL side gear snap off on a 225, forget it, unless someone has some old obsolete parts still in stock.

Here ya go.. HR-3300 VCR, the first VHS VCR, I think. Something worth collecting! :D But if you find one be sure it has the optional RT-3300 timer installed!

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1338296828

Was also sold by Mitsubishi as the HS-100U.

So, the HR-7650U was indeed a more-reliable model than the HR-D225U that you exactly described. Thanks for the write-up, and I will be sure to avoid the HR-D225U. Of course, I would much rather prefer cleaning the rollers in the HR-7650U than changing broken gears in the HR-D225U.

That's good news so far. Please list of all problems you saw in the HR-D750U, HR-D180U, and HR-D237U, and do you or not classify them as reliable? Why are they not #1 in your list, when they're supposed to be? Why the HR-D830U instead?

If I recall (don't have the old service manual for those as reference like I do for the 225..) intermittent mode encoder switch can cause slack tape hanging out of cassette upon eject, intermittent ground on the bottom deck terminal board, power it on, squeals and shuts off (fixed with a star washer under one of the screws to ensure good grounding) slipping reel idler, loose entry and exit guides causing tape path error and mistracking, stuff like that.

That doesn't sound too bad. Looks somewhat reliable to me for the most part. :yes: Most important to me is it has a linear transformer power supply inside. I refuse to take one with a switching power supply, like the HR-D830U, because it ALWAYS cost me $30-$40 to rebuild, and I get sick of that already, along with my frustrations with Panasonic's serious electronic aging issues. I have a 1988 Panasonic PV-S4880 being tear apart right now with a locked-up capstan motor and video board needing new surface-mount caps.

In my repair experience, I found the 80s Toshiba and Funai/Shintom decks to be the most-reliable and longest-lasting, which I first suspected 5 years ago. And now, Studio Sound Electronics finally admitted and confirmed Toshiba, Shintom, and Funai being the top 3, most-reliable VCR brands, so that's great news for me.
.

Apparently, I can't get one of this, as the seller ran out-of-stock of the HR-D750U that I wanted in the first place. Now, I can choose the HR-7650U again, HR-D225U, or HR-VP700U only. These are the only models that interested me.

Wrong advise...
 

Unfortunately, that's the wrong move, as someone on eBay bought a new in box JVC HR-D830U for $400 shipped, and it did NOT work out from the box. He even exchanged it, and the second unit was broken also and did the same thing. The problem he described was the partial snow, and it cannot digitally track any tapes. This is due to a bad surface-mount cap under the video head.

The buyer already left feedback to seller and wrote, "I got 2 bad Vcr's but the seller was honest and refund the money. A++

Item: http://www.ebay.com/itm/270978772532

Nice try...

Takes all of 10 minutes to fix that. And a 3.3uFd/25V SMD capacitor.
Or, possibly one of the brass guide posts fell out of the bottom of a tape guide base. That can cause that symptom too. Another easy fix.

I don't have much experience like most of the people here, but my Uncle had an Akai TV that broke, since I have only seen 2 CRT's actually bite the dust in my lifetime (the other was our old 80's unit) that is pretty significant. I don't have any experience with Akai VCR's but that is my experience with their TV's. Of course this is just one story from a consumer....

As far as VCR's I had a RCA that bit the dust last year, it started eating tapes, and I was mad because it ate something that I had recorded that I like. It was actually a good unit with a nice picture. I recycled the unit. VCR's are a dime a dozen, they are as low as 50 cents here at yard sales. Its easy to find one for a dollar if you are patient. I never pay more than $3 for VHS. Our family blew through probably 3-4 VHS from the late 80's until 2004 or so when we stopped using them extensively. Of course they are still in use though, I have plenty for spares!

Added pictures of my mitsubishi HS-430U to post #31 since there can be some confusion with the newer "HS-U430".


http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...9&postcount=31

Is there any way for you to share this data? The issue I am looking into is how repair rates improve over time as products become mature and manufacturing improves. So I would love historical time series data for repair rates for VCRs.

I would've figured on JC Penney ranking higher. I had a late 80's/early 90's model given to me right around Y2K and that thing was built like a Sherman tank. Heavy, hi-fi stereo, cable compatible and controls on the front of the unit if you did lose the remote. It went DOA one day for no reason and I foolishly tossed it. I'm now using an LG VCR/DVD combo that is obviously better than the Walmart stuff and it suits me for no more than I watch VHS anymore.

At least some of those JCPenney VCRs were made by Matsushita Panasonic. They would come into the shop out of warranty, usually with worn out heads and other wearing parts from heavy usage. Many had switching mode power supplies which when one went dead was probably the final blow. By that time VCRs were being sold at grocery and drug stores cheaper than you could rebuild one, so out with the old, in with the new.

So, did you actually replace a lot of worn out video heads when the Panasonic VCRs were only 1 year old (eekkk...)?

Didn't say anything about time.. out of warranty, yes. I'd guess on a heavily used machine playing lots of Blockbuster tapes and time-shifting soap operas, maybe 3-5 years before record quality starts going downhill first from worn heads, or maybe first sign's a flutter in the hi-fi audio from worn hi-fi heads.

I've never been big into just sitting and watching tapes but I used it mainly for archival purposes of stuff I figured I'd never see again. Case in point is WMC in Memphis had the last live wrestling program in the nation. I recorded some of its last incarnation (Power Pro Wrestling) on tape and then when it died, Jerry Lawler, along with Jimmy Hart, Dave Brown and Lance Russell, hosted clips of classic matches entitled Memphis Classic Wrestling. I recorded 4 tapes of that but other than that, it sat dormant. Came in one day to use it and it was DOA. Quite a good machine and I hated to part with it but I knew it would be an arm and a leg to repair it IF I could find someone to do it even.

i am TOO kurious to see ANY Yamaha vcr:yes::scratch2:
or http://www.remotes.com/remote_images...s/eur51215.jpgTECHNICS vcr:sigh:http://www.instrukcia.ru/images/sm_h...1b4qjhpdu6aus4http://www.analogalley.com/osccart/i...manVCD1000.jpg
and sanyo+fisher ARE the same origin:yes::tresbon:

ALSO superDIGIFINE JVC VCR