[ARC Tech-109]

No. The Panasonic is just as good but it might not do any better with the old tapes. The issue is the original machine was probably out of interchange and this is why the tapes won't play on another one. Home decks used alot of plastics and they warp, even the aluminum base will squirm slightly as the plastic its screwed to shifts over the years. LP compounded the problem as it cuts the margin for errors to a third of SP mode allowing a slight overlap of the recorded video tracks, they rely on an azimuth offset between the A & B to guard against crosstalk but there's always a small degree of bleed thru that adds to the noise. Automatic tracking only looks at the video RF envelope from the head amps and shifts the phasing to maximize this regardless of the HiFi output, a manual tracking deck would be an advantage
Honestly I'm not sure how I'd go about capturing these tapes despite my experience with video restoration. A "sacrificial" deck that I could adjust and manipulate the tape guides while observing the head waveform on a scope would be one way but its the dynamics of the old tapes that would be difficult to chase in real time. Telephone audio was better than LP linear and given the tolerance for mass production the linear head might be off slightly, tweaking the azimuth screw might help but it will also affect the tracking, don't get carried away here.
If the tapes were recorded with the bad pinch roller all hope is out the window as this introduced an unknown number of variables such as wow & flutter speed variations, slight up or down sliding and possible contamination by shedding the hard rubber and embedding it into the tape itself. Give the Panasonic a try as you have nothing to lose here, good quality VHS decks are all but impossible to find anymore, I'm talking the first generation of HiFi decks from the likes of Hitachi and Matsushita (Panasonic) G-chassis. The Hitachi VT109 was an oddball 5-head HiFi deck that was better in the LP modes with the AFM, I had one years ago and was impressed with the stereo recording quality.