Panasonic NV-FS200 heads are bad?
 

Hello, my 1st post ;)

I am buying a S-VHS for a while. Panasonic NV-FS200 was quite popular in my country, and there are sold from 150-250 EUR here and there. I'm affraid to buy a lemon, so I need some help, to spot obvious problematic deck. Recently I had seen one with odd behaviour:

- tape winding very quiet and I would say slow. My home VCR makes "tornado sound" when winding and it does fast(er). Also 25y+ ago I worked on JVC BR811 deck and was lound and fast. This sample of NV-FS200 might have problems with transport? What to look for? I tested unknown seller's VHS and mine JVC S-VHS tape, same on both.
- With TBC/off image was just shattered and I could not even say what is showing. With TBC/on image locked, but sometimes with split frame, with black horizontal line in the middle; again both tapes same behaviour.
- image weirdly dull (dark, muddy, low resolution) and finally with those horizontal bands over the freame, where dark feature in image than effects all further image to the right of frame. Just like a shadow casted through whole image horizontally, either bright or dark, depending on feature. Again, both tapes had exactly the same problem.
- image from S-VHS tape (that I remember it was good, since recorded on Panasonic AG455) resembles some 15th copy of rental tape and was exactly the same (bad) is owners tape, which was indeed replicated copy of his graduate party (aka "prom") and was expected to be bad. So my Original SVHS was not any better than his low grade VHS.

I skipped that deck, but would like to hear from experts if that deck just had "dirty heads" or "dead heads" or that might be typical problems, ... for future reference as next time problems might not be that obvious.

Many thanks.

I'm not sure about the transport, these decks didn't have the super fast rewinding that many later vcrs had, it being quitet should be normal though. That said if it was very slow it's possible it's not going into fast rewind and is stuck in the slower speed used at the end of the tape etc.

The image symptoms seem like very typical effects of capacitors in the video circuits going bad.

Oh yes, hodgey!

That might be it. Image was quite low in brightness overall, I would say at 50% expected. And now I recall more precisely how it looked. "Shadows" was cast after very bright part, as if something would exhaust its powers. As "light" would com from left and after bright part, less would be left for further part of frame. It makes sense if capacitors have this purpose and if they are bad (leaked, swollen), they do not provide proper capacity and near bright parts exhaust voltage before frame is finished.

This effect I saw before. THANKS TO YOU, I now it's electrical problem not just "heads just needs some alcohol", a seller suggested. And since this forum I know how expensive is to fix this.


Regarding transport, You might be right. I remember this model(s) from 20y+ ago in a tape-replicating store, that transports was indeed buttery smooth when load/unload tape and also dead silent. And not super fast. All true. Opposite to broadcast units I mentioned before, didn't care for silence, just speed and longevity.

Many thanks. I think I already got answer to my concerns.

Hi there. This series of Panasonic decks are known for their failing capacitors in the sub Y/Chroma board. There is a comb filter module on that board that has small electrolytics inside of it and when they leak they cause a very bad picture or no picture at all. You can see the rust/corrosion caused from leakage without even taking the module apart.

Thank you for the update and image.
I guess than, it is almost sure to expect that all of the remaining machines would be affected by now at some degree, unless a) they were already refurbished or b) were not used at all and even then the time works by it's own and might go bad soon. I doubt any of these rather expensive machines would be saved for later, but was rather used as much as possible by it's every owner. Any way, it's probably safe to say that cheaper units on sale are the one for asking repair (soon).