Quote:
Originally Posted by German Dalek
O.K., I shall do it. 
B.t.w., I have a lot of the old VCR tapes. Anywhere, here or inside another forum was told, that these tapes are very bad, just good enough to damage the drum!
I have the idea, to rewind a VCR cassette with a HQ-S-VHS tape (This was an advice) and record it for you with clean stuff.
Because my machines don´t run, I have to ask somebody to give me a hand.
I have an idea, whom I can ask. 
I have all the old tapes from curbside, my experience is, that most people dealed with a "reasonable" recording quality.
Remember that most/all recordings were done with the private antenna as a source.
That would give you a chance to realize, what these machines really can do.
Regards,
German Dalek  |
Thanks! Much appreciated!
I have run in to some shedding VHS and Beta tapes, and especially Umatic tapes - tapes that clog the heads and stick in the guides, drag and slow down rewind and fast forward. I've got a setup for baking tapes that I've had some success with, to dry out the binder and get a tape to play without jamming. I've primarily used it on nine track computer tapes for data recovery, but I'm hoping it will work for video as well, as I have a growing stack of Umatic and Beta tapes I want to recover. I do worry about the longevity of VCR format tapes, but have not experienced that yet. I know the media formulation is different, and I don't know if they suffer the same sorts of sticky-shed that Umatic is very prone to. The Video 2000 tapes I have are mostly curled/cupped, but they don't seem to shed oxide.
I have a couple of VCR/VCR-LP machines I need to spend some serious time with. Getting one shipped here intact is difficult, and while what I have wasn't working when it was shipped, international shipping has not done them any favors. Not to mention the difficulty buying things based on only a few photos of the outer casing, only to receive something that's a rusty mess inside. But, that is my next project, to repair one of these to full working order, I think I have enough good parts to build at least one. I started with Video 2000 because I figured it was similar enough to VHS (visually, anyway, with two reels next to each other) that it would be easier - how wrong I was once I started trying to understand the track following! The saving grace of Video 2000 is the beautiful design with individual motors for every function, meaning no belts! It's such a well made mechanism, I really love it. I have various belts on order for the VCR format stuff, however, so that will be a fun adventure to get going. Of course, then, there is the other interesting challenge of adapting things to work with my available power. The voltage is easy, all these machines seem to have strappings to change the input side of the transformer over to 110V. The VR2020 has one single AC synchronous motor, which, while I know it'll be running too fast on 60hz instead of 50, it does not appear to affect anything, as it's only used for threading and unthreading the tape. Speed isn't that important. The N1500, however... uses AC synchronous motors for the drum and capstan, with magnetic braking for speed regulation. Which I'm sure would not be happy to compensate for a 20% increase in speed! That's going to be a challenge... and content for a completely different thread at another time. haha.