"the most durable VHS tapes I recall were from Kodak"

Yes, as much as I hate to admit it. I used to always use and tout Maxell, high end Sony and TDK. However if you think about it, bet that most magnetic recording tape of any kind in that era was made either by TDK or BASF. Remember BASF ? Tween the two of them they ruled most of the tape field and a few other things.

However they of course made different formulations for different customers, who were then subrogated to the results.

I forgot to mention that I personally had the best results with BASF. With helical scanning, it seems there is another factor, the physical durability of the media. BASF was tough and if you put a T120 in a machine not quite aligned right it would be affected less than a TDK equivalent for example. However in initial recording quality the TDK was slightly better.

The is my observation and it is based on experience, in my case I usually used Sony betas although I did have one Sanyo, and Panasonic VHSes. I had one NEC VHS deck which I still actually have, it's actually branded a Harmon Kardon but it is an NEC. Top of the line, equivalent to an N-965U. This thing has the peculiar ability to record not only in hifi stereo, but linear Dolby stereo as well at the same time. I just had to have it. You could feed the NTSC off the tuner with MTS to the linear tracks and have pretty decent stereo and record totally different material on the hifi tracks. I did this a couple of times with football games back when I was into it. It was nice on Monday night games because ABC didn't **** with the mix, we got the crowd noise in the back speakers and the radio announcer in the front. Watching on a five foot Advent we never heard a TV commercial. Sawum, didn't hearum.

Anyway, all we need now is to preserve this old stuff because eventually it will be gone.

J