Mark D. Zacharias wrote:
NSM wrote:
"ken" wrote in message
oups.com...
I took one of the tapes I taped material on and viewed it on
another
VCR and it was fine - no snow or jumpiness.In other words, stuff i
tape on my machine looks fine - both on my vcr and on another vcr
-
but commercail tapes are snowy and jumpy on my VCR

Bad tracking.

Gosh, what a helpful response.

To the OP:
Specifically, the tapes you've been viewing OK are recorded at slow
speed,
the rental-type tapes are at SP speed. A 4-head machine, which yours
must
be, uses different heads for the different speeds. Obviously, your SP
heads
are dirty or worn out. A proper cleaning is in order. May or may not
fix
your problem.
Mark Z.

Another thing which has caught me out a couple of times on 4 head decks
is that one set of heads seems to remain "bad" despite cleaning,
leading one to believe they are worn out. However, turned out leaky
caps on the head amp pcb gave me those symptoms and after changing
them, things were fine. Could have been an expensive lesson if i had
simply changed the upper drum without checking first!
NOTE: that applied to (AFAIK) a sony and hitachi unit from about
1994-5, not as likely to be a problem on newer units but you never
know...

Ben