Hi!
BTW, check the mode switch. Other problems to look out for: capstan motor and
idler assembly causing a slow rewind condition with some cassettes.
Haven't seen any capstan motor problems...well, at least no hard failures.
It did eat a tape *once* but when a VCR has been around this long you can't
really blame it for having done so. It's never done that again and I don't
know that the capstan was to blame. I found the tape stuck on a large rubber
pinch roller.
The idler assembly--been there, done that. It got so bad that the machine
couldn't rewind. At first I didn't worry much about it because there is
another VCR right on top (have you guessed that this is used for tape
duplication at times? Every now and again I need to copy a home-made video
or something like that...) that I just rewound the tapes with afterwards. I
decided later that it should be properly fixed and I did. It was one of my
first successful VCR repairs.
As for low audio level for recording, that was also a problem with a linear
stereo Sears machine, OEMed by GoldStar, that I have which is collecting
dust.
What's really, really, really strange about this problem is that both tapes
recorded on it AND prerecorded tapes play just fine on it with no discerible
difference in audio level. Tapes made in other units also work fine. I can't
quite fathom what the problem is, but I'm not losing sleep over it as this
is usually the playback deck anyway.
This isn't a stereo machine either...at least not that I know of.
Also true. You can tote a ToteVision anywhere, heheh.
Cute. I wonder if they've ever marketed anything that way?
I must say however, that this VCR has some weight to it. Even as basic and
no doubt cheap as it is, it would still flatten one of today's all-plastic
machines if you were to drop it on the new unit.
BTW, I am sure a lot of people remember Bell & Howell. My how they have
fallen, from making some high quality film projectors all the way down to
making cheap and crappy electric shavers advertised on infomercials. -
Reinhart
I can't imagine what must have gone wrong there. The last I had heard from
Bell and Howell was that they had sold off their film scanner business to
Kodak. I don't know what they do now, but I do know that they like licensing
their name out for others to use.
William