Thank you for your detailed reply.

On Thursday, December 5, 2013 8:32:09 PM UTC, wrote:
One possible test to see if it may be those caps on the drum motor is to use your finger to put a little drag on the drum as it plays. If the speed stabilises, there is a good chance it's those caps.

If I put quite a bit of braking force on the drum (I used a piece of chamois leather) the speed stabilised and the picture was stable albeit with a blue tinge down the right hand side of the picture, until I released it. Too much pressure and the video output was pure noise.
I suppose the next step's to locate and replace those capacitors...

The tape path wear causes problems and usually does cause the tape to ride up in review. Unless you want to replace practically everything, just forget it.

I'll see how far I get with giving the whole path a good clean, and leave it at that then for the REV thing. I can make do without REV.

ALWAYS COUNTERCLOCKWISE.
Thanks for the heads up on that.

Cheers,

Nick