My solution to head wires is push them into x2 drinking straws and put the head drum over the straws through the holes. Very easy. You got there with the heat shrink tubing while I was writing this :-)
In fairness to VHS, it did have something of a pro variant - Panasonic's M and MII, the latter of which was used by Anglia and Thames for commercial and continuity playout in the 80s and early 90s (at a time when my local station Tyne Tees were still plodding along with a clapped-out Bosch B-type cart installation that was getting noisier and noisier audio-wise with each passing year!)
Yes, I have an MII machine here, and a number of Thames tapes. But the format was an utter disaster, unreliable as hell and hard to work on. BetacamSP was far more robust and so much more popular. The problem with MII was the tape size was set as the same as VHS, making the tape too thin and the tape path over-complex.
That head drum problem is really too bad... Still interesting to see how to take apart a VHS head drum, despite the problems with the cables, this seems easier that expected, I would have expected taking out the screws would mess up the alignment somehow... I have a JVC BR-6600 in my collection, as well as a BR-8600 (which features various insert editing functions, but no HiFi audio) and an RM-86U editing controller. Complete with all sorts of special, rather unobtainable cables. My BR-6600 has a broken gear in the loading mechanism, I hope to get that fixed some time soon. The special video connector actually isn't a Umatic Dub connector, the pin count is different. Instead, this is JVC's own proprietary version of S-Video, using more solid connectors and I think a different carrier frequency for the chrominance signal. So despite not being S-VHS, this machine does have a separate luminance and chrominance output. JVC as far as I know was the only manufacturer to use this connector, and they only used it on their professional grade equipment in the late 80s. These connectors are called Y/C 358 and were made by Hirose Electric. They are very hard to find. These professional VHS machines were actually used by the BBC, they are shown in photos on the vtoldboys website. As for your idea about making a second channel: My advice is not to do that. Splitting videos up between multiple channels does not work very well. The main channel will remain the most popular one, while nobody bothers even just to subscribe to the secondary channel, no matter how much you advertise it. At least that's my experience. Just keep all videos on this one channel, a secondary channel would only make sense for a totally different topic that would attract a totally different audience. I have gotten used to different videos having a different popularity. On my channel, most things related to retro audio are doing very well, while videos about camcorders, another one of my hobbies, barely get any views.
I'm stunned at a "pro" machine, VHS or not, having no real-time counter. Maybe no VHS machine had adopted part- or full-load at that point to accomplish it. I'll bet that multi-pin connector on the Panasonic is for an editing controller. In high school media class in the early-mid 90's, we had a set of Panasonic pro VCP, VCR, editing controller, and mixer board. Those also had XLR connections for audio, no phono/RCA connections like that one.
I usually solder the tips of the head wires together to a length of wire to pull them through the head, but the heat shrink tube is a good solution! I have had machines with the same binding problem, usually after the machine has been stored for years. After removing the entire drum assembly, I soak the lower drum in a container of WD40 for a couple of days, then power up the motor on a bench PSU for a few hours. It usually does the trick, but sometimes you can hear that the bearing is shot. Perhaps you could revisit the machine at a later date, would be interesting see what the problem is, even if it is not repairable!
I think one of the transformer magnetic cores is breaking up from the sound and feel of it. Maybe I could strip it down one day but removing the drum looks non-trivial on this one.
I've messed about with x3 Betacam and x3 Panasonic Pro SVHS machines in last 6 months and all machines would not lace up in varying degrees. The fix in every case was lubrication although not always obvious where the lubrication needed to be. Don't give up!
VHS, or at least JVC and possibly Panasonic, switched to fully laced mechanisms in the mid/late-1990s, around the same time they introduced the high speed winding. It actually made them more reliable and far less prone to losing the tape off the guide rollers. Otherwise it was still VHS and unless you had a 4 head machine the picture quality was not great, and so they were pretty much all 4 and 6 head towards the end. Interestingly, though, out of all the VHS machines we had, the Sony and Philips machines were always the worst and incapable of using tapes that had been used in other brand machines, because JVC and Panasonic apparently wound the tape tighter than Sony and Philips.
Some were part-laced. They would start winding laced and then after some seconds, switch to semi-laced so they could still read the track pulses. Meanwhile Sanyo Beta went the other way, they started all laced and switched to unlaced from the VTC5000 onwards. I'm going to do a video about laced/unlaced/peep-search and track pulse counting, at some point.
Did you ever get to the bottom of the binding lower drum? I had a very similar problem with a BR-7000 many years ago. Ended up completely disassembling the lower drum. The glue beneath the lower half of the rotary transformer had expanded, and caused the brittle ceramic-type material of the transformer (the part in which the windings are laid into) to crack. The upper/lower set of windings were then rubbing against each other. Sadly was beyond repair, of course.
It's quite likely to be a similar problem. Whatever is causing the binding is probably not possible to repair, so it's not worth the time involved in stripping it down. But I've kept the machine in case anyone ever offers me a spare drum.
@@video99couk haha yep, I kept my old BR-7000 too, on the off-chance that I'd ever find a new lower drum, but after 18 years living in NY, with the BR-7000 in my parents' loft in England, I think it's fair to say it's never gonna happen 😄
I suggest sticking to 1 channel. Curious what's causing the motor to seize up like that but I guess a compete teardown is too much work. I read those Panasonic SVHS pro decks requires the SMD capacitors be replaced. Have you ever replaced 50-100 capacitors on a machine?
I think there is a breakup of the flat disks of the rotary transformer, because I can hear grinding noises in there. Even if I were to strip the head down, the chances of being able to repair it without spare parts is very low. These early Panasonic decks don't use very much surface mount circuitry and no such capacitors. You can see me replacing capacitors on a Pansonic DVCPRO deck on my video about "DVCPRO is excellent, I hate it". I've also had to replace lots of capacitors on the TBC of Sony EV-S9000E machines. I think the most I've one on a single machine is about 40. It soaks up a lot of time.
Another suggestion: When uploading 4K videos, keep them unlisted for a few hours after the upload, so UA-cam can finish processing them. That's how I do it, that way the first viewers to watch the video don't have to watch it in 360p ;)
@@video99couk Very odd, usually my videos are done about one hour after the upload... Maybe it's because of the length... I assume you upload mp4 files with H.264 codec as UA-cam recommends?
I am desperate for an idler assembly for a toshiba/general v31-v33 betamax vcr...Does anyone no where i could get one or a few..i am in greater manchester england...Thanks!
I don't know where you would get an idler for that one, you may have to "make do and mend" such as fit a new idler tyre to it. Idler tyres are not quite so hard to find, just based on their sizes.
i would have taken the motor apart from the second the drum didn't spin, releasing the clamp and removing the shims, then push the shaft + top side of the transformer though the top. I've only seen one machine that was horrible, that was a philips one with a really horrible head and no locating screws, just an evil clamp on top, impossible to replace the heads without a special jig. :-( I'm sure you know the one im taliking about. I don't mind what you like to repair, i'm used to repairing all sorts, but i'm not your whole audience. Yes turning the head 180 degrees does yeald no colour, and the heads azimuth mix up would cause problems, yes i've made that mistake lol. Never mind, you had a go :-D
the jig requirement for philips head drum was for more than one model. they used the clamp mounting since V2000, till... probabely early-mid 90's. but at least, on V2000 you can't go wrong as the head commutation is done by an optocoupler above the drum. the plastic piece who make the switch impulsion occur is mounted on the drum itself, so totally foolproof.
hi will say they go for very good money working on ebay i have a sony with a bad power unit just the 240v to 400dc part is bad i pulled a power ic out to stop the 400dc getting to step down transfromer the 240v ac tp 400v dc was playing up i saved the video deck the power unit that comes out 1/2 of it is bad ir cost over 1000uk new it was a auto power part that was bad
My solution to head wires is push them into x2 drinking straws and put the head drum over the straws through the holes. Very easy. You got there with the heat shrink tubing while I was writing this :-)
In fairness to VHS, it did have something of a pro variant - Panasonic's M and MII, the latter of which was used by Anglia and Thames for commercial and continuity playout in the 80s and early 90s (at a time when my local station Tyne Tees were still plodding along with a clapped-out Bosch B-type cart installation that was getting noisier and noisier audio-wise with each passing year!)
Yes, I have an MII machine here, and a number of Thames tapes. But the format was an utter disaster, unreliable as hell and hard to work on. BetacamSP was far more robust and so much more popular. The problem with MII was the tape size was set as the same as VHS, making the tape too thin and the tape path over-complex.
That head drum problem is really too bad... Still interesting to see how to take apart a VHS head drum, despite the problems with the cables, this seems easier that expected, I would have expected taking out the screws would mess up the alignment somehow...
I have a JVC BR-6600 in my collection, as well as a BR-8600 (which features various insert editing functions, but no HiFi audio) and an RM-86U editing controller. Complete with all sorts of special, rather unobtainable cables. My BR-6600 has a broken gear in the loading mechanism, I hope to get that fixed some time soon.
The special video connector actually isn't a Umatic Dub connector, the pin count is different. Instead, this is JVC's own proprietary version of S-Video, using more solid connectors and I think a different carrier frequency for the chrominance signal. So despite not being S-VHS, this machine does have a separate luminance and chrominance output. JVC as far as I know was the only manufacturer to use this connector, and they only used it on their professional grade equipment in the late 80s. These connectors are called Y/C 358 and were made by Hirose Electric. They are very hard to find.
These professional VHS machines were actually used by the BBC, they are shown in photos on the vtoldboys website.
As for your idea about making a second channel: My advice is not to do that. Splitting videos up between multiple channels does not work very well. The main channel will remain the most popular one, while nobody bothers even just to subscribe to the secondary channel, no matter how much you advertise it. At least that's my experience. Just keep all videos on this one channel, a secondary channel would only make sense for a totally different topic that would attract a totally different audience. I have gotten used to different videos having a different popularity. On my channel, most things related to retro audio are doing very well, while videos about camcorders, another one of my hobbies, barely get any views.
I'm stunned at a "pro" machine, VHS or not, having no real-time counter. Maybe no VHS machine had adopted part- or full-load at that point to accomplish it.
I'll bet that multi-pin connector on the Panasonic is for an editing controller. In high school media class in the early-mid 90's, we had a set of Panasonic pro VCP, VCR, editing controller, and mixer board. Those also had XLR connections for audio, no phono/RCA connections like that one.
I usually solder the tips of the head wires together to a length of wire to pull them through the head, but the heat shrink tube is a good solution!
I have had machines with the same binding problem, usually after the machine has been stored for years. After removing the entire drum assembly, I soak the lower drum in a container of WD40 for a couple of days, then power up the motor on a bench PSU for a few hours.
It usually does the trick, but sometimes you can hear that the bearing is shot.
Perhaps you could revisit the machine at a later date, would be interesting see what the problem is, even if it is not repairable!
I think one of the transformer magnetic cores is breaking up from the sound and feel of it. Maybe I could strip it down one day but removing the drum looks non-trivial on this one.
Percussive maintenance! Love it!
I've messed about with x3 Betacam and x3 Panasonic Pro SVHS machines in last 6 months and all machines would not lace up in varying degrees. The fix in every case was lubrication although not always obvious where the lubrication needed to be. Don't give up!
VHS, or at least JVC and possibly Panasonic, switched to fully laced mechanisms in the mid/late-1990s, around the same time they introduced the high speed winding. It actually made them more reliable and far less prone to losing the tape off the guide rollers. Otherwise it was still VHS and unless you had a 4 head machine the picture quality was not great, and so they were pretty much all 4 and 6 head towards the end. Interestingly, though, out of all the VHS machines we had, the Sony and Philips machines were always the worst and incapable of using tapes that had been used in other brand machines, because JVC and Panasonic apparently wound the tape tighter than Sony and Philips.
Some were part-laced. They would start winding laced and then after some seconds, switch to semi-laced so they could still read the track pulses. Meanwhile Sanyo Beta went the other way, they started all laced and switched to unlaced from the VTC5000 onwards. I'm going to do a video about laced/unlaced/peep-search and track pulse counting, at some point.
Did you ever get to the bottom of the binding lower drum? I had a very similar problem with a BR-7000 many years ago. Ended up completely disassembling the lower drum. The glue beneath the lower half of the rotary transformer had expanded, and caused the brittle ceramic-type material of the transformer (the part in which the windings are laid into) to crack. The upper/lower set of windings were then rubbing against each other. Sadly was beyond repair, of course.
It's quite likely to be a similar problem. Whatever is causing the binding is probably not possible to repair, so it's not worth the time involved in stripping it down. But I've kept the machine in case anyone ever offers me a spare drum.
@@video99couk haha yep, I kept my old BR-7000 too, on the off-chance that I'd ever find a new lower drum, but after 18 years living in NY, with the BR-7000 in my parents' loft in England, I think it's fair to say it's never gonna happen 😄
Can you help me colin to an idea where i can get an idler assembly and a belt kit for a toshiba v33-v31 betamax vcr..Thanks..Aaron
I suggest sticking to 1 channel. Curious what's causing the motor to seize up like that but I guess a compete teardown is too much work. I read those Panasonic SVHS pro decks requires the SMD capacitors be replaced. Have you ever replaced 50-100 capacitors on a machine?
I think there is a breakup of the flat disks of the rotary transformer, because I can hear grinding noises in there. Even if I were to strip the head down, the chances of being able to repair it without spare parts is very low. These early Panasonic decks don't use very much surface mount circuitry and no such capacitors. You can see me replacing capacitors on a Pansonic DVCPRO deck on my video about "DVCPRO is excellent, I hate it". I've also had to replace lots of capacitors on the TBC of Sony EV-S9000E machines. I think the most I've one on a single machine is about 40. It soaks up a lot of time.
Good machines! I like it!
Crap! Can't you get this JVC BR-6600E "professional" VHS VTR working!?
Nope, it's just not practical given the size of the problem and the age of the machine.
@@video99couk Then this is now a pile of trash.
Another suggestion: When uploading 4K videos, keep them unlisted for a few hours after the upload, so UA-cam can finish processing them. That's how I do it, that way the first viewers to watch the video don't have to watch it in 360p ;)
I did, I scheduled it for two hours after upload!
@@video99couk Very odd, usually my videos are done about one hour after the upload... Maybe it's because of the length... I assume you upload mp4 files with H.264 codec as UA-cam recommends?
I own a BR 7000 - the tape will not lace... Head spins and tape goes in and out very smoothly.
Can't really debug that remotely. Is the loading motor getting any voltage? If no, the deck may be confused by a bad mode switch.
I am desperate for an idler assembly for a toshiba/general v31-v33 betamax vcr...Does anyone no where i could get one or a few..i am in greater manchester england...Thanks!
I don't know where you would get an idler for that one, you may have to "make do and mend" such as fit a new idler tyre to it. Idler tyres are not quite so hard to find, just based on their sizes.
i would have taken the motor apart from the second the drum didn't spin, releasing the clamp and removing the shims, then push the shaft + top side of the transformer though the top.
I've only seen one machine that was horrible, that was a philips one with a really horrible head and no locating screws, just an evil clamp on top, impossible to replace the heads without a special jig. :-(
I'm sure you know the one im taliking about.
I don't mind what you like to repair, i'm used to repairing all sorts, but i'm not your whole audience.
Yes turning the head 180 degrees does yeald no colour, and the heads azimuth mix up would cause problems, yes i've made that mistake lol.
Never mind, you had a go :-D
the jig requirement for philips head drum was for more than one model.
they used the clamp mounting since V2000, till... probabely early-mid 90's.
but at least, on V2000 you can't go wrong as the head commutation is done by an optocoupler above the drum.
the plastic piece who make the switch impulsion occur is mounted on the drum itself, so totally foolproof.
Your Ferrograph has nice VU meters too...... Be a great videojust saying :)
I could demonstrate it working, but I don't really want to pull it apart.
@@video99couk If its working-great:)
Changing idlers isnt too bad a job if not though
Il videoregistratore non e' riparato perche' il tamburo delle testine e' difettoso,e' da cambiare.
hi will say they go for very good money working on ebay i have a sony with a bad power unit just the 240v to 400dc part is bad i pulled a power ic out to stop
the 400dc getting to step down transfromer the 240v ac tp 400v dc was playing up i saved the video deck the power unit that comes out 1/2 of it is bad
ir cost over 1000uk new it was a auto power part that was bad
It's not really a very special machine, just big and old, I wouldn't pay much for one personally.
For 240 lines and horrible colour, this machine is highly overengineered.