Tracing any signal in these VCR's is a real pain, the circuits are quite elaborate and everything is packed in here extremely tightly. Poor-quality ..PDF scans of the schematic diagrams don't help either. But if it comes to signal tracing, I suppose I'll have to.
I'll try checking some caps with an in-circuit ESR meter first though. Most bad caps I encounter in these are in high-temperature areas like the power supplies, but on rare occasions I have found bad ones where I least expected it.