+LearningZone also don't forget that these old tapes have lasted for decades. Can't say the same for optical media, and flash memory, well lets just say that those memories can be gone in a flash as I found out when I tried to read a card that had been sitting untouched since the video was recorded on it. My 4 part series, Vancouver Island by Motorcycle) is an example. There are all kinds of glitches and pixilation, and many gaps in the finished video due to files that would not open due to read errors or data corruption. Me thinks that my generation that grew up on film and video tape will be the last generation that we will be able to look at these preserved memories. DVDs the dye layer fades and they the disk can't be read. Flash memory the charge stored in what is essentially a bunch of capacitors that hold a charge, or not, will loose their charge and then can not be read, and hard drives will eventually fail. Store your personal photos of video in the cloud and your personal photos and video is now public for everyone in the world to see. The most reliable I can see is removable hard drives that are not kept running, and have at least 1 backup on a separate drive. That is what I do. I have a box full of 500 gig hard drives and my source files go on them, and my edited projects go on them as well. They are stored away from the computer and I have at least 2 copies of all media that is valuable to me like my photos, videos and music.

+12voltvids Great explained almost every thing! The same I experienced what you did dear sir. Tapes were way reliable and there was a special joy and enthusiasm while watching them. Such joy is not possible with today's modern media! I was loving such machines due to their mechanical and electrical combination. The misfortune those days while I was learning such a skill the internet and nice teacher like you was not available for me. I was trying to grab knowledge from books, service manuals and experimentation. But sure it is way easy and fine to learn it from an excellent teacher. The other misfortune was those days my budget was not allowing me to grab an average multimeter even! And problem today is not having enough time to do something and to learn some new skill.

+LearningZone I learned most of what I know about VCRs from working on them. I did take a couple of courses while working in the field, but when I stated my apprentice in 1979 there were not many consumer VCRs around. I actually forced myself to learn it because I bought one for 2,000 in 1979 and it broke down. It took the service center 5 weeks to fix it, and I was choked. When it broke again, me being a tinkerer decided to open it up and attempt to fix it myself. I did and learned a lot by reading. The shop I worked at back when I was still in school sold VCRs but did not repair them. Getting a job at Sony in 1983 was my big break, because Sony taught me the Betamax theory and practical hands on. VHS is not much different, electrically they are almost identical, but mechanically totally different as far as tape threading goes, but the concept is the same. When I left Sony and went to the independent shop I picked up VHS right away. Of course when I was making a living servicing them, I was like all servicers very secretive. I wouldn't even show my co-workers. My boss used to insist that he watch me work, and I would putter around, and not solve the problem while eyes were on me. That's just the way it was. Didn't want people finding out the tricks of the trade so prices could be kept up high.Of course the shoe in on the other foot now. I make my money based on views on the internet, not whet people actually pay me to do repairs, because nobody values these old machines anymore.We can thank Apple for that.

+12voltvids Wow! you works on Sony! it should be an amazing experience!

+Naitoraven951 Actually that was a distant memory. I only worked for them for a year, and they was given 2 options, one was to relocate to Winnipeg and the other was to leave the company and stay on the wet coast. Winnipeg is affectionally known as winterpig, as they have brutal winters, and I am not one for ice and snow so I walked and ended up in a warranty depot for a number of manufactures for the next 20 years.

+Navpers 47 Your welcome. Keep fixing!

+KSA Its never too late to learn.I am still learning new things every day.

+umajunkcollector Actually this is a pretty good VCR. That is why 20 years later it is still working, and serviceable. It is not a HIFI machine, which would elevate it from a good to a great VCR. Panasonic made many good reliable VCRs over the years and this was one of them. They also made some terrible, complex designs. I am thinking of the one with the board over the chassis, and the solenoid that operated a clutch that threaded and unthreaded using the capstan motor. Also known as the 2 motor design. This one is a 3 motor, Drum, Capstan and loading.The 2 motor units (There is a teardown for one of those on my channel) was a bad design, yet many of their most expensive VCRs (the AG1971, 1980 AGW1 ect) used this chassis.

+12voltvids so if I ever try to service my Panasonic ag-26-000-e unit that it will be a pain to work on...well its good to know before if I ever worked on it..

+Anthony Kurtzweil The 2 motor designs were not that bad, just more gears that need timing. I have a couple of videos up showing the disassembly / reassembly and timing of the mechanism. There is one for the bottom of the chassis, and another for the top side.

+Donald Ellett I would hope so. I worked in a service center as a service engineer for 20 years.

+Jason james Yes JVC had some good machines all right. Something that many people did not know though. JVC of course stood for the Japanese Victor Company. It was formed as a Japanese subsidiary company of the Victor Talking Machine company. From 1954 to 2012 JVC and Panasonic were merged companies. Kenwood was also brought into the mix in 2008, but as of 2012 Panasonic has cut ties with JVCKenwood.A lot of people thought that JVC and RCA had a relationship because of the RCA Victor history. Not true. RCA bought the rights to the Victor talking machine company in the USA and became known as RCA Victor. Of course RCA stands for the Radio Corporation of America. RCA bean its existence when GE bought the American Marconi company and formed the RCA corporation, and this all stemmed from the US Government requested that GE stop selling its Alexanderson Alternators used in AM transmitters to Marconi. Interesting how these things come full circle isn't it? Of course in 1985 GE took over RCA, and broke the company up selling the RCA assets to Thonpson the following year.

JVC machines had to be renamed in US, since Victor has the rights (hence the name NIVICO, Nippon Victor Company)

+zx8401ztv YES THEY DO.You are right about the mode switches. They cause many problems because the microcontroller reads the wrong value and does strange things.

In VRS 601, mode switch is activated by a lever when you Push the cassette. Debris and even a piece of paper loose from a casssete can make it work badly.

+Dallas Dorrington Yes definitely worth keeping. As to VCRs nobody is using these anymore to record, or very few are with everything digital now. Where the real value in this old technology lies is the library of media that people have accumulated over the years, and I am not just referring to pre-recorded media. I am referring to home videos, of kids growing up, family vacations and the likes stored on VHS, 8mm and Betamax. As these machines break down, and cannot be replaced, more and more people are turning to trying to repair, or finding someone that can transfer their tapes to DVD. In my business I transfer about 100 tapes a month to DVD for clients. That is why I have to service my machines are keep them all running.

got down to the mode switch. do I need to un soldier it?

+Shereen Esser and I do not have that special spray thing you put on the mode switch to keep it clean.

+t0nito I did. The original one was 30 seconds. The new intro is 15.

+Low Budget Productions Well I did do a Sony TCDD3 DAT Walkman, and that is about as small as it gets.You think MiniDV is bad try working on a portable DAT. Just like MiniDV but smaller!No I don't enjoy those tiny things. The close up on the eyes isn't what it used to be.

+Fred Chew Probably not. A problem in the head amp would cause total picture distortion. If the luminance (black and white) portion of the picture is good then the head amp is fine. Colored lines would be something in the chroma up convert circuit.All VCRs use a process called heterodyne, or color under recording. They take the color signal, which is normally a double sideband suppressed carrier AM composite signal mixed into the video. For NTSC that sub carrier is 3.579545 MHz, for PAL it is 4.43MHz. Through mixing and frequency subtraction, the color signal is converted down to 629KHz and recorded as an AM signal along with the FM luminance portion of the video. On playback the low frequency portion goes through a low pass filter to remove the luminance carrier (and the luminance carrier goes through a high pass filter to remove the chroma)The chroma is then processed by the chroma circuits, and the frequency is converted back to the standard subcarrier frequency for the video standard you are working with and mixed back to the video.Color distortion if more likely caused by a drum servo error, running slightly fast, or slow. Your TV is likely able to lock in, and display the image stable, but it is far enough off that the chroma circuits are falling out of lock.I have a broadcast monitor that I will be showing off at some point soon. The key thing with broadcast monitors is that they have a very slow AFC for the horizontal, and color sync. So when playing a tape with bad time base it will show up as a wildly shaking picture. This was required in a broadcast environment so that the operators and engineers watching would know immediately that their signal was out of spec, and could halt transmission.Generally the alarms in a proadcast station would have already triggered and the transmitter had already cut over to the fanous "we are experiencing technically difficulties" slide. Our RCA TK28 telecine camera was always on standby, and the slide was loaded in the projector. As soon as an alarm was triggered, or the master control operator hit the switch the projector lamp would turn on, and the transmitter cut to the telecine camera. This was to keep the transmitter from broadcasting an out of spec signal, and causing interference, or damage to the transmitter.You can see that massive camera unit on this archive page. It was a beast.www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/tk28.htm

+Guy I. Horn Never had a problem using standard copy paper. I learned this technique from a broadcast engineer at a TV station I worked at. The heads are made out of ferrite. They are strong in the direction they spin, but any vertical pressure up or down can break then off as they are very thin.

Yes of course they pay me to fix their equipment. Units that are shipped in, they pay the shipping both ways and for the cost of the repair. My rates are considerably lower than shops with a store front as I have no overhead, and I also make money from the advertising that appears on my channel, so that allows me to work for less than the average shop, but I still charge something.

12voltvids Ok, I see. If you were near me, I would have you repair my broken VCRs and camcorders on video.

Why not? Not everyone wanted hifi. 2 head machines were also made.

@@12voltvids Yeah, but I thought they only made stereo by the time the bare bones machines came out.

Nope, in the end there were probably more mono only models offered because the cost was so low. There were cheap hifi models as well.

@@12voltvids The reason I like hifi stereo more is because I record things off of tv, and I like it in hifi sound.

It's funny, and this is no bullshit. I opened a second bank account, and for every repair I have done, I put 10% of everything I fixed in that account. For every VCR I cleaned for example, I was paid 15.00. For every mode switch I cleaned I made 30. (50% of shop labor charge) I put 1.50 and 3.00 respectively for those 2 theoretical repairs. Over my career this turned into a substantial amount of money. I have forgotten about it all. It is squirreled away in a retirement account earning fairly good interest these days, but it is there for my retirement. I was paid on average about 250 a day when I was working in the business so I would put away about 20.00 a day and totally forget about it, like it didn't exist. I had to because there was no pension plan where I worked. Now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Hitachi made machines used a sliding type encoder switch and yes it gets just as dirty and causes problems. I think I have a video up for that. If not I will make a video showing it.

@@12voltvids the vcr in question is a rca vr667hf. To my surprise it looked like no switch. I'll maybe take it apart again but I looked for 20min with the chaise taken right out. Thanks again

@@reel_images There will be some sort of switch. On some late model units they used push switches mounted on the main board that were activated by the slide cam moving back and forth. The model vr667 means nothing to me now, nor does most model numbers. I have been out of the game professionally since 2003. I know the units to see them, but unless I am looking at the machine with the top off I couldn't tell you if that was a hitachi or matsushita made machine. Speaking of Matsushita, I remember Hiro Matsushita, grandson of the founder of the Panasonic empire. He was a race car driver, and I remember meeting him at Westwood Motorsports track when he won one year. 88 or 89 I think. Of course his car was tricked out with Panasonic logos.

I always enjoyed the Mitsubishi models from the late 80's. They were built on an aluminum dicast chassis with metal parts. Units like the HSU82, HSU67 / 65 / 55 / 53 ect. I also didn't mind any of the Sony models, both Beta and VHS. Hitachi also had some easy to work on machines as did Panasonic. Panasonic also however had some real bastard machines out there. The one in this video, for example is a panasonic made machine and is relatively easy to work on.

@@12voltvids Thanks for all your efforts.

@@12voltvids my rca vr337 2 head mono machine did this same problem when I jammed a tape in it THIS IS A LONG STORY SO BEAR WITH ME. THIS WAS THE EXACT SAME ONE EXCEPT IT WAS A 2 HEAD MONO. THIS WAS BACK IN JULY 2017 AND I TRAPPED THE TAPE BY ACCIDENT ALL THE WAY BACK ON 2/17/15!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well how the mechanism got out of time is when I got the extremely eaten up tape out manually by lifting the 2 hinges to lift the tape out of the player. Then it started not going in and out and it was really annoying. I will attempt to get another one like this one day off ebay.

Sorry, don't work on smartphones or tablets. Have done some simple things to get a few up and running, but that was more luck than anything else.

12voltvids well, do you know that the lg G4 phone has a very common failure called bootloop? That is what my phone is doing. It is a broken soldier connection on the main board.

I don't have an LG phone. I have a Blackberry Priv. As I said I don't work on phones. I am sure that someone that does work on them has made a video of it.

12voltvids I do not know who.

+Govinderjeet Singh When I worked in broadcast we used to use Xylene solvent.You have to be careful with this stuff though as it will damage plastic and rubber parts, so you need to use cotton swabs with wooden sticks to clean only metal parts with it.