11:56 - That is a back-tension arm band. It is supposed to be lose like this when the cassette is out. When you put a tape in, the internal workings will engage a back tension arm connected to this little felt band. It will then start providing the necessary back tension to the tape so it can pass over the heads correctly.

You and VCRS is like me and Cassette decks... Glad I'm not alone with my obsessions!

Yeah I’m with you on the top loader they just seem so awesome! Lately I’ve been putting The Goldbergs on VHS and would love to watch it on the same VCR model used in the intro!

Nice job! Amen on wet tape cleaners... They're the liquid plumber of the VCR service world - not really what you want. I've use a small piece of plain paper wetted with some cleaning and held gently against the drum. Done this for years. Q-tip for the seperate audio head. Works beautifully. One great thing about these older machines is they are far more adjustable if you're doing digital conversion. Colour, additional tracking, picture alignment, audio head adjustment, so much can be tweaked under the hood here that can't be done on late model machines which were greatly simplified to reduce cost.

I have a Emerson VCR875 (I assume from 1987 and it's the exact VCR used in Home Alone 1!) and it still works fine! It does have a quirk when I first power it on and load a tape, it will hang when the tape laces up and shut down. I have to rinse and repeat every couple times and it does eventually fix itself up. I guess it's a mode switch but I rely on KZfaq tutorials for an exact VCR and nobody has done a video about it (not even 12voltvids) so that I don't accidently mess something up! Regardless, it's still a beast and has a great picture (for VHS standards anyway)! Also regarding the crinkling on your Elton John tape, the fault was the pinch roller (so glad you cleaned that btw)! I've had that happen on a portable Panasonic VCR in January on a shoddy Jack Frost tape that was a white tape like Barney LOL🤣

Hi Yasmine, 1 extra tip for cleaning is to seal the vcrs up in a plastic bag for 24hrs incase of things like roaches. I've done a lot of old retro consoles in the past and that has always been the best practice to make you you don't get any unwanted guests. Enjoying your content, I love retro-tech takes me back to being a kid and the nostalgia and excitement of having our first vcr, those were the days.

As she says, "they don't make them like that anymore" they don't make them anymore.😄 Well, I happen to have a Telefunken VR-400 my grandparents bought in 1978 (or 1980). It is a top loader with clunky mechanical levers as buttons for the tape drive, a 3 digit mechanical rolling counter, 8 manually tuned channels to select from, a belt driven picture head drum (every later VHS had a servo motor built into it), weights like 40 pounds and the display is only a red regular digital clock with no extra indicators as they are placed on separate led's beside the buttons and levers. It has a crap ton of circuit boards on every side and top to bottom that covers the entire mechanism from beneath, far less modular built unlike your Quasar with just one board. Real 70's tech, but unfortunatly is not working and under repair. The next is a JVC HR-7200EG bought in 1983 by those who gave me it far later, and that I've had for 20 years now. The buttons are just electronic switches for everything with leds beside or built in to them. The display is just a clock (like the prevoius VCR) but in a green phosphorus tube, and the counter is mechanical with 4 digit rolls, 8 channels manually tuned. Has still all the original parts with nothing replaced, just cleaned and it still works despite being over 40 years old. Also contains a lot of circuitboards on every side, top and one covering the entire beneath. The last model of the old VCR's I have in the collection, is a Blaupunkt RTV-321 front loaded. Has the same height and width as the two previous models. I think it's from early 1984, and have more indicators built into the display for clock, date and the 16 channels, but the ones for the tape drive have leds built into the buttons and the counter also still a mechanical 4 digit type. One special thing it have, is the mistakenly spelling name VTR printed by factory on the power-on/off button. Every one of the three VCR's I've mentioned have a manual tracking wheel or knob on the front, so no automatic tracking is showing up during the start of playing a video tape. That, you have to adjust by yourself until the picture looks good and keep it there. After this era, the VHS (or VCR's) became like people used to remember them like yours. The VCR you have looks decades ahead for its time in the design for being an 80's videotape recorder. It looks like the DVD/VHS combo player you also have, made in the late 2000's, like it is timeless and still modern unlike my VCR's were theirs age really shows. Thank you for a great and interesting video!😊

Good job! Just to let you know, Quasar is Panasonic, Matsushita to be exact. This VCR should be identical to the Panasonic PV-2700 apart from cosmetic changes. This model has one of the best chassis mechanisms that Matsushita ever made. You could try resurfacing the pinch roller using Rubber Renue. As for top loaders, I have quite a few of them, the oldest one being almost identical to the one you showed at 3:08. Yes you do have to maintain them but seeing them working is a pleasant reward. Most people these days don't know how to fix this stuff and that's why they avoid this old stuff, and I don't blame them. They are a marvel of engineering with lots of stuff that can go wrong any time!

Quasar was a value-priced sub-brand of Panasonic. Quasar VCRs have the same build quality and picture quality as Panasonic VCRs. Great video! I am intrigued by your curiosity ❤️🙏✌️

@YasmineCollects I have somthing even older. The JVC HR-7700EK from 1981 with remote, user manuals and reference card. it's built like a tank. There is no plastics used for it's construction. The last I checked, it still worked!

I love your enthusiasm for what was considered junk when you lived it 😂 watch your use of “component video” vs “composite”. Component video has the green/blue/red video cables (Y/Pb/Pr), and incidentally I have a very late model Sony VCR/DVDR combo that has component outputs… not that it really makes the VCR portion look better through a CRT, but the menus are super crisp. But I’m with you on the Panasonic. Had mine since Christmas ‘96 (senior year Christmas gift, my first Hi-Fi stereo VCR) and it’s still my goto.

My uncle gave us our first vcr the day before Michael Jackson - Thriller aired in the small hours here in the uk. Dad set the timer. We went to bed. And by AM it was there in all its celluloid glory. It was just exciting this new tech was here & what wonders it could do. It was a Ferguson videostar which was ex rental. That invention changed the game. Sadly. I don’t bother much with free terrestrial tv. I have a hard disk to box. (A humax YouView 500gig twin tuners) but the outside aerial is shared. And the picture has ghosting. I’ll tell you for a piece of tech to look out for. A pioneer DVR-5100H. It was just spectacular! The playback on our behemoth Sony CRTs (2005/12) was extraordinary. You could run a vcr through it to backup what you recorded on your vcr. It was one heck of a box of tricks. I promise you that if I could have that again I would be very pleased. (I dunno if the ex has sold it - we don’t speak) Thank you for the up. Sorry it’s another sonnet. Happy Xmas and new year to you all from a very cold east of England.

That little Quasar really is in exceptional condition. I wouldn’t be surprised if that VCR didn’t have more than 75-100 hours of total play time given how clean it is. The counter that showed simply counts from 0000-9999 to give you a frame of reference of where you are on the tape, it’s not related to the hours on the unit.

12voltvids has a nice video on cleaning VCRs, he used to be a sony VCR repair tech, he uses writing/printer paper and alcohol highly rec checking his channel as well he does a lot of retro repairs on these old mechanisms.

Hey sweetie, its best to use the old school crt tvs when viewing any brand VCRs. Using todays large flat screen tvs you're going to see more defects of the video portion of the picture. 32 inch old school style tvs would be the idea size to watch movies from vcrs. Or a 27 or 20 inches. Hope that helps. Dvd players produce a much better high quality picture then vcrs. You can hook up dvd players to todays flat screens. Hope this helps.

never found an auto tape cleaner that actually CLEANED the damn thing

I allways get excited when i see that u released a new video of ur latest project. I wonder how long its gonna take till u realise that with all thse old vcrs one can actually build a fully functioning ca-tv system to feed ones old tvs with diffrent programming😅

21:16 that seems to be a PAL or other standard tape, any pal tapes play in black and white because NTSC is an incompatible color space.

Hi Yasmine, normally you can lift the circuit board on those machines without removing cables. The cables should be long enough. Just remove the screws and lift the board careefully. You could prop it up using a toothbrush or something plastic. Good luck with it, remember that those old machines are built to allow servicing.

For adding the top cover, try to angle it and put it in on the front first (mostly below the plastic front cover) and then put the rear down.

Like your little PA speakers!

You can get Rubber Renue which I've heard's good for pinch rollers. I've been meaning to get some for my cassette decks..

Too bad I got rid of both of my VCR combo units recently after both their respective tape and DVD functionalities stopped working. One of them was even a Japanese unit my friend gave away to me that used the D-terminal connector in place of RCA for YPbPr progressive scan output

Mon appareil ressemble à ça et maintenant j'essaie de le réparer

Nice... Ive got me a rca thats like 90s era... I need to clean it also...

1:26 - "I was kind of just chilling out and enjoying my _daily driver_ [...]" - I certainly did not expect to ever hear such a statement *about a VCR* in the 2020s.

If you were a 1980s kid like i was , you have a deep fondness for the well built VHS players , , also if you are a Anime Fan , this video reminds me of that Cowboy-Bebop episode where they got sent an antique video tape and went through all kinds of hell to aquire a Vintage functional CRT monitor and VCR to play it with , but after all that struggle after finally returning to their spaceship their friend Radical Edward informs them the video tape wont fit because they got VHS vcr their tape was for BETA-MAX 😂😢 with them all dreading another vist to partially destroyed earth to search for correct console 😂😭🤣

I've gotta say that the build quality is very impressive and looks very serviceable. It sads that the quality went down with time on every brand. When it comes to serviceability, early 2000 VCR made in Indonesia are the worst, you can't change a capacitors without ripping pads.

Nice video ! 📹

I had a perfectly working early 90s JVC. I rewound a tape the other day and now it’s off alignment again. I wonder what would cause that.

Nel quasar ho notato che ha l'idler di tipo dentato invece che di tipo gommato,e' un bene perche non avrai problemi,e' piu sicuro.bel videoregistratore

They really are built differently aren’t they? Very very cool! Sorry about them mold. That really really sucks! Fun fact, The Parent Trap is one of my all-time favorite movies!

💕

19:53 what brand is that speaker sitting next to that tv?

Nice machine. I think the audio was just fine. Microphones can be tricky.

Wow I hope I'm lucky enough to meet a Lady who's into the same sort of stuff as me one day.

Always called it Broke-sonic as their 90's VCR's we used were crap.

Wow... VHS Is coming back into fashion. I must be getting very old. 👴

Good Morning Yasmine my name is Mike I love all things tech no matter how old it is I have subscribed to your channel do you know or have you seen a video format that uses Vinyl records in a giant protected sleve they called them CED discs

Why is a 4 head your daily driver? why not 6 head with stereo?

I used to clean the head with my mothers vodka back in the day

Japan best technology

Say it like you mean it

I forgive you!❤

Keep your mode switche clean out everything proven people keep there mode switch clean out like they should in there VCR player people will never have playing problem's at all everything proven online how clean out a mode switch in a VCR player

wat a brand namem lol some of these ol' ass brands i never heard off b4