General Electric model 9-7120 clock flashing 12:00

[Dave A]

The flutter may be edge damage on the audio track edge of the cassette. If the audio level goes up and down, the warped edge of the tape may be lifting away from the head just a bit as it goes by. The edge (I forget which...upper or lower) will have a wavy look to it.

Find a tape that is presenting the problem and eject it at that point and open the door to look at it...the fingernail pressing the little buttons at each end of the door assembly will let you open it.

[darklife]

Originally Posted by Dave A

The flutter may be edge damage on the audio track edge of the cassette. If the audio level goes up and down, the warped edge of the tape may be lifting away from the head just a bit as it goes by. The edge (I forget which...upper or lower) will have a wavy look to it.

Find a tape that is presenting the problem and eject it at that point and open the door to look at it...the fingernail pressing the little buttons at each end of the door assembly will let you open it.

It's all tapes that play like this. It has to be something with the VCR itself. It's not the volume level, it's more of a wow sound like the audio pitch flutters.
I cleaned the heads and rollers and all seems to be fine. Not sure what's causing it.

[Tony75]

Had that problem on one of my old National (Panasonic decks), cleaned everything (no improvement) changed rotor and stator for capstan (not much change) replaced a couple of extra idlers and gears in reel drive (little improvement). Was quite prepared to assume it was a kind of servo problem on the main board and left it alone for a while. Later on the tension band for the supply reel disintegrated (as they do after a while) replaced this and re-adjusted it, and wow and flutter is much better as a result.
Hope this helps.
Tony

[Barry777]

Take a look at your pinch roller - sounds like it has a lot of small cracks. This will make the tape speed (and thus the audio) vary several times per second, resulting in a fluttering effect without upsetting the picture.

A similar effect happens when a Hi-Fi tape is played back with the tracking slightly misadjusted, but there is usually a "fart" sound along with it. The problem you have sounds more like a typically aged and dried-out pinch roller. You can probably still get a new replacement.

The suggestion above about tape edge damage also makes sense. Make sure your VCR isn't actually causing it, as that would make all tapes appear have the problem also (if not the pinch roller). Try playing a tape first in the GE, then another VCR to make sure it still plays in a known good VCR. Not a bad idea to make sure the tape isn't getting curled on the top or bottom from guide posts drifting out of alignment. However, the pinch roller is the strongest suspect in a unit that age.