Re: Akai VHS VCRs - want to hear your opinions on them
The old VS-1 was a real battleship among battleships! Looked like nothing else.
Then the one with OSD that looked a bit like a Space Invaders screen, especially on the odd occasion it failed. Advanced for its time. Did they rebadge a 3V23, or am I mistaken on that? They certainly badged the older JVC mechanicals.
The ones I met most were the VS-22 with the capacitor failure that Maarten mentions. It used a very complicated and curious power supply that combined a switching regulator with a mains transformer. Akai supplied a small circuit board and a bunch of capacitors which would work, but was tedious to fit. Then the next machines over-ran their displays, so you fitted another mod kit with unusual (for the time) 120uF, high temperature, low-ESR capacitors. This brought the voltage down, but of course the customer had used it until the display went out so now it was virtually invisible. One modification kit, one new VFD display and one disgruntled customer!
Pity about these problems as I can't recall many mechanical faults.
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