With Beta VCR's going for big bucks on Ebay (at least if in good working
order) I thought it might be worth fixing up and selling some of the ones
I've kept in storage for just such an occasion. Some aren't going to be easy
though, and here's one I'm going to need some advice on.
It's a Sanyo VCR-4500, and the problem is that the tracking slowly and
constantly wanders back and forth. I tried tweaking some of the adjustments
on the servo board, but still could not completely stabilize it. I admit my
knowledge of VCR's is somewhat lacking; I never fully grasped the concept of
servos and PG systems and much of the other complicated circuitury. I can
only guess that some reference signal is drifting in frequency, but that's
about as fancy a theory as I can come up with.
I thoroughly checked the power supply and all voltages are rock-solid. I
noticed that the capstan supply voltage, specified as 12VDC in the manual,
only measures 11.6, not sure if that would affect anything or not. I also
tried swapping the capstan motor from a known-good machine but that didn't
make any difference.
It's worth noting that the unit was working fine when I first acquired it,
some six or seven years ago, and it has been in cold storage ever since.
Maybe some bad caps?
Thanks for any advice.