You are so welcome!

The big issue i have with VHS c is they came ewuipt with the EP speed. this should never have been an option. Same with 8mm and dv having an lp speed. Or perhaps a big warning that pops up on the screen every time a recording was started in EP warning the user that they may not be able to play their tape back in the future. EP on VHS and lp on 8mm and DV had zero guarantee that the tape could be played on any machine other than the machine that recorded it. You should see the look i get from clients when i have to spend 4 or 5 hours working at getting a recovery of some 8mm or digital tape recorded in LP and none of my machines will play it and the original camera is long gone. Not uncommon to charge 200 or more for a damaged or moldy tape.

I don't do this out of boredom, I do it to make money off the video that I make of the repair as I certainly don't make any money fixing VCRs for customers. I never get bored because I've always got something to do and if I have nothing to do I'll just go throw my leg over my Harley and go for a nice long ride, looking forward to nice warm days where I can jump on the bike go for a 4-Hour ride just to have lunch and turn around and ride another 4 hours home wonderful way to spend an afternoon I highly recommend it. And for those that think we are crazy for riding motorcycles all I can say is once you try it you'll have a different opinion that's why we ride.

@@12voltvids Absolutely! I haven't fixed a VCR on years! I usually service PCs, servers and laptops. But for an 84yo man who refuses to move with the times, I made an exception. £60 for the repair, plus I got to keep the old VCR which I repaired, so not all bad. I personally have no interest in bikes, I fell off a full sized manual naked bike while going around a circuit during basic training. It was raining, freezing cold, the visor was fogging up. I got my 74 V8 and it has all the noise, speed and heating I need. Besides, in the UK, its almost always raining, there's pot holes everywhere, everyone I know who rides a bike has some horrible story and a scar to show for it. I don't want to be one of those people.

@@MrClassiccarenthusia perfect weather only for me. Only time i have come off a bike was a 10 speed peddle bike and i got banged up good. I stick to divided highways with no cross traffic and will never ride into the city. Too many idiot car drivers. I enjoy road trips in the car too, even more so. Heat, Ac, music ect but I have been riding now for 50 years, started with dirt bikes when I was 8 and been riding on the road since the day I turned 16. I don't do anything stupid. No high speed driving or stupid manoeuvres. I intend to arrive safe at the end of every ride and that requires 110% focus and attention.

What is funny is I did that corporate video about 20 years ago! I totally forgot about it, and a VCR comes in with the tape inside and it was OMG, I shot that video! I didn't do the voice over, we hired a local radio personality for that part of the production as these were high end shoots where I was making like 10 grand for a 5 minute demo video.

You can buy be a coffee (or beer) here HTTPS://PayPal.me/12voltvids

Yeah. I have 2 kiss exposed tapes. One pal and one ntsc. The ntsc has an echo when mixing hifi and linear on every vcr i tried. The pal one doesnt have that

Well it was an expensive camera! Notice he wouldn't say what it cost him. Oh well he can afford it.

Mostly by ear as modern machines with auto tracking will adjust the service for highest rf waveform. So you are fighting against it unless you select manual tracking. The audio quality will dial you in close enough.

Head is dorty

Well I could do this as I still have a couple of broadcast quality cameras here. Both are 3CCD types. My broadcast JVC ENG camera I believe is broken, at least the tape transport it. Only has about 500 hours on it and it broke. JVC = Junk Very Cheap. It wasn't cheap though, that camera and tripod cost me 10 grand 20 years ago.

Amazing, @@12voltvids! Thanks in advance, Dave! I would love to see that! If you could put some printed test pattern too, would be amazing to see how each captures more or less details or with wich things has issues a entry level versus a professional. This doubt came to me the other day, 'cause I have a old JVC GR-AX30 and I was transfering tapes to digital and when compared to my other JVC GR-SXM747UM (sure, it's SVHS-C but I used common VHS-C's) the difference it's quite noticiable. Plus in the captures with the AX30 I noticed a lot of gain noise in low light and other artifacts... It's like if the sensor resolution was a lower than the ntsc standard and then scaled to "fit the tape". I don't know if I make sense, maybe you got the idea of what I try to say. PS: Sorry the bad english

Crackling sound during loud passages is usually the hifi heads wearing out. The audio is FM and on loud sounds the deviation is greatest. Worn heads can't capture all the bandwidth and dropouts is the result. Same with video heads. You see it on bright sharp edged scenes first like titles over a black background.

What is the brand and model?

@@12voltvids It's an RCA VRS620. Thing is, finding information about this machine is nearly impossible, at least Google searching it gets no results, not even a picture of what the VCR looks like. I assume it's just a generic thing with the RCA logo. It also needs a change of bulb since it doesn't detect when tapes start and end and a belt change since it can't fast forward or rewind properly.

There are mechanical switches that activate when the solenoid is closed that opens and allows a current limit resistor to be put in series with the solenoid coil. The switch is closed with the solenoid is not activated and shorts the resistor. When the power is applied full power goes to the solenoid to pull it in, then the switch opens to reduce the current as it doesnt take as much current to hold solenoid in. If the switch fails to open the current limiter isn't switched in and the coil will overheat.

@@12voltvids thank you very much for the information I also noticed when the solenoids got hot after I was playing a tape for 25 minute the play button was released and looked in the service manual and saw a mini solenoid that releases the transport keys when there is an issue like this to protect the unit

@@12voltvids hello thank you for the very fast reply I did notice by the take up reel hub that there was a switch that when is put into any function is turned on and that activates the hub brakes and the only time the solenoid is functioning is in play mode I do not see any switch that gets released the only switch is the break one and I have a factory modified unit so it might be different there are no fuses for the solenoid section there is a jumper and two people told me the transport release is a safety feature what do you think I trust you

@@12voltvids hello there is a switch near the take up hub and that is the only switch I see other then the captain motor switch and shut off when the play or ffwrd or rew are used that switch gets turned on could that switch be the problem thank you again all the best have a great week

The control track is the electronic equivalent to the sprocket holes on film. It is used on VHS, beta, umatic and open reel vtr of all formats. It is not used on 8mm, hi8, digital 8 or any DV format. The control track job is to mark where vertical sync is. This is the point where the heads switch from one head to the other. It serves 2 jobs. One is to tell the playback machine what speed the tape is recorded at. It is also pulsed typically only at the start of the "A" field. This way the VCR knows which head to position to the start of the video track. The tracking control shifts a delay which changes the phase of the capstan motor to shift the start of the video frame. Speed is detected as the speed is 30hz coming off the head so if the frequency is 90hz when the machine starts the speed detector knows it is an ep speed tape and slows down the capstan speed. Newer machines use an envelope detector to measure the rf coming off the tape to maximize so the ctl is not used to the same degree except to detect the speed and the presence of a signal. Of no ctl the VCR generally shows a blue screen. It is still used even on auto tracking machines to detect the start of field "A" otherwise the tracking could track up on the odd fields. Picture would play but it wouldn't look very good. So it is still needed. 8mm and DV don't use a control track. They use a pair of pilot tones recorded on the tape to steer the correct head to the correct track. Called auto track finding. The v2000 system in Europe used a similar system.

@@12voltvids Thank you for detailed explanation. Yes, I knew it is also used for speed detection. So generally, is it possible to play a tape if control track is missing? I think it is possible on old machine with manual tracking control - or am I wrong?

@@Felix2417425 I once messing around a vcr's ace head, and simply FORGOT to reconnect its flex cable when done. It does play fine for a few second before picture starts to roll for a moment, then religns itself, and the cycle continues. I believe the vcr's servo/auto tracking was working hard trying to do its job relying only on rf feed from the head alone - sort of. So yes, it may play to a certain degree without control track but not that long. (Took me a while to figure out why the rolling pic&no sound at all!😅)

Likely the tape was recorded at LP or EP. By default many machines went to the slowest EP speed when they were plugged in and you have to change them to sp using remote. Personally i think every machine should have defaulted to the sp best quality speed but what to I know. The speed is detected by reading the control track. If bottom of the tape damaged and the ctrl track can not be read it will go to the sp speed

@@12voltvids yeah that’s what I am thinking. Unfortunately this deck doesn’t let me manually change speeds. I can slow it down in editing software but there are flashes of static every 30 frames or so. Looks like I might need to take the tape to a transfer place to see if they can do better. Thanks for the reply.

@@cannedjam6191 My tapes recorded in the mid 1990's do the same thing, but I know the cause behind it. The VCR that was used to record those tapes, was a low-end unit with 2 video heads. Plus if I recall, it never got a head cleaning and it was out of track too. It always had a static bar at the top of the video, and the tapes were recorded in EP mode. Those tapes when played on my Sony and Zenith VCRs, always switch from EP and SP playback back and forth. Lol

That was one way they did it when re-aligning VCR's. Crude but it worked.

The tape that's been recorded in mono, There's no sound, only a "sneak" sound. Mono audio head is clean and clean, but it is the same symptom. Mono audio cable is normal. It's hard to find anyone with this repair technology in our country. I need your help.

Anything can happen. The head doesn't get our I'd alignment. No head do, only by people sticking a screwdriver in thinking they can do better than the manufacture.

Try cleaning the linear audio head.

There's no difference, it's just a VCR stuck in the same unit as a DVD recorder, with a signal conversion/digitizing circuit between.