[waltchan]

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

We saw our share of Toshibas. I remember a few Betas from the late '70s-early '80s. VHS mostly rubber drive parts. The later line early-mid-'90s that included M-752 I think it was, tended to get a cracked capstan motor pulley to the reel drive, many came in with that pulley loose spinning around, or some the belt would just break and/or get soft and fall off, and of course no reel drive eats tapes. RCA decided to sell Toshiba-made VCRs at that time with that same mechanism so we saw a lot of those too. Another common fail was the die-cast loading arm that went from under the cam gear and operated the FL mechanism. Many of those came in with that cast arm broken, from operator getting a tape jammed. There was also one certain electrolytic in the SMPS that would fail and PS would not start up after a power failure. Another Toshiba model would not tune to certain HRC cable channels, would just hunt back-and-forth across the channel not lock. We got in over 50 of those all in warranty to add a capacitor to the tuner circuit to change a timing issue and make it work.

Ahhh, yes, this was the mid-90s Toshiba chassis, which was a joint-venture with Thomson/RCA. Studio Sound Electronics, the largest online DIY VCR parts store, called this the MBK-48 chassis, and the owner also agrees this was a junky, unreliable VCR. Frankly, I'm never interested in this chassis.

What about the mid-to-late-1980s Toshibas with linear power supply inside? No major problems, right, besides rubber parts? I assume it's reliable overall, and the #2 most-reliable rating must be valid after all.

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

Agree about the Panasonics and their offspring, capacitors especially not aging well. I gambled and lost when I bought an AG-1830 new in 1989 for roughly $1000, even bought a spare head drum, but every capacitor in that thing must be bad. It started showing symptoms after maybe 5-6 years.

The most common caps failed in the Panasonics are the surface-mount caps located on the video and Hi-Fi audio board, and I've seen this in many Panasonic units made after 1988, whether it's a simple, no-frill 2-head mono or 6-head Hi-Fi S-VHS unit. Video that turns black, no color, and distorted video, or distorted or no Hi-Fi audio sound are all caused by the surface-mount caps placed on bottom of the hybrid IC board. Repairs are always costly, and they will eventually fail again shortly in the future, due to poor design. They overheated most of the time due to poor ventilation, so the surface-mount caps dried up faster than normal.

My local technician is always not happy fixing this for me. Every time I sent him a Panasonic board to fix, he had to unsoldered 55 joints total, then 10 joints for all the surface-mount caps, and then re-soldered 55 joints again when finished. Total: 120 solder joints, and I only paid him $40 total, and the tech quoted me a wrong price in the end and told me I got a great deal. Re-soldering all 55 joints were the most difficult to do for him, as the tiny solder joints could make contact with each other easily and blow out the power supply if not soldered right.

Tech told me to stay away from Panasonic units made after 1988 (aka. G-Chassis decks) if I plan to keep vintage VCRs running for another 50 years in the future.

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

There were a few Panasonics and Quasars in the early '80s that had a big ol' power transformer in 'em before they started getting SMPS. Some of those had remarkably durable rubber parts too, that didn't seem to deteriorate like newer rubber.

All the Panasonic/Quasar VCRs made before 1983 used the big ol' linear power transformer. The AG models used this until 1987. The last, linear-powered Panasonic VCRs were the 1986 AG-1810, 1986 AG-1950, and 1986 Canon VR-HF720.