Issue with AG-5710 from TGrant, dim display, snow?
 

Its been awhile since posting in the forums but seem as of recently now im starting to see issues with one of my 5710 (the sister of the 1980). Upon loading a tape...a gear seem to be stuck then the tape ejects. Then of course the hissing sound from the power supply (or something else nearby), the once the tape plays the picture quality is actually very good as it should be but with some bits of snow in the image, regardless of tape I have in the machine. Then of course the front display is back to being dim as it can be, but not fretting too much since I use the edit controller.

This deck was serviced by TGrant back in 2016. Of course to be fair the deck hasn't had much use since then other than running it at least once a week to keep things fresh. But now it's starting to exhibit issues again and to be honest its starting to feel like a pit like Lordsmurf has talked on with his 1980. Not to mention that TGrant's repair prices has gone up quite a bit and its getting more expensive just trying to repair this unit.

Im not sure what to do at this point. At $625, and not even including the shipping both ways which is going to run over $700+ easily, im not sure its even worth it. I have my broadcast decks for the SP only tapes and one other 5710 which was recently serviced and so far working well. Its too bad there's not many options of getting these units worked on and unfortunately I can't drop $700 right now.

Plus, on Grant's website they aren't even accepting the 5710's right now, only the 1980 model which I don't get since they are identical minus the tuner, front ports and the DB25 connector. So I guess for the time being im out of luck. I wish I had taken up electronic repair.

Do you know which items in the machine TGrant worked on 5 years ago?

Components fail at different times, what was OK 5 years ago may have failed since.

Loading motor has a known issue with a cracking loading motor gear/coupling.

I don't remember offhand I will have to look up the paperwork to find out which I still have. I know it had TBC issues along with the infamous dim display. And back then it was $400 for the service with shipping.

It's not something nearby.

Electronics 101 (which I learned not in school, but via the school of hard knocks):
A affects B affects C, etc, ad nauseam.

To be frank, the AG-1980 is a clusterfvck design. Panasonic engineers may get kudos for the video quality, but they also deserve scorn for spawning a unit that gives repairmen nightmares. The innards of these decks look more like a pile of random e-crap than a VCR. So, anyway --

The boards in the unit cause some sort of feedback that presents in the PSU. It's not actually the PSU. If you swap a known-good PSU (from deck#1) into the hiss unit (deck #2), that PSU (#1) also hisses. Put it (#1) back in the good deck (#1), no more hiss. Take out the hissy PSU (#2), and put it in the good deck (#1), odds are it still will not hiss. The snake that you want to strangle resides in the boards, not the PSU. Fun, huh? When you have enough non-working AG-1980 decks, and decide to play musical components, in an attempt to franksenstein at least ONE good unit, you'll learn that nothing works. Been there, done that.

The Samsung 5000W (and 7000W) is a clone (semi-clone?) of the Panasonic AG-W1/2/3 units. Those are infamous for noise in the signal, as cause by poor shielding and grounding on the transport. It's cumulative. I've not seen this on a 1980 deck, but I'd suspect it may be a Panasonic commonality. In years past, people would discusses ways to "demagnetize" decks, usually Panasonics. Those threads usually went nowhere, but in hindsight may be simple grounding issues. This topic deserves more investigation, but may be related. Snow/dropouts are how the error present.

Caps failed. :censor:

Again, A affects B affects C, etc. So the "dim" is just an affect on the display, but potentially screwing up other aspects of the unit.

Same here, several times over. Not happy. :huh3:

I don't get that either.
In fact, I don't get several things there. :screwy:

I don't agree. This is a caps issue. Replacing only "bad caps" is/was unacceptable, knowing that all caps would fail in time. The repairs were way, way too costly for a halfass repair job. ALL caps should have been replaced, to ensure the deck lasted for another decade or two. Not just until the deck popped another cap, crapped itself as only Panasonic AG-1980 does, becoming a boat anchor that requires a repair that costs as much as another boat.

If it were something completely different -- head fail, transport ingest, etc -- fine. I get that. But not the caps. Unacceptable.

That was a standard caps job. Same here. And that's why I'm pissed. :pullhair:

@Lordsmurf,

I've always enjoyed reading your posts and insight on different topics, and having issues again with my 5710 I had read some of your older posts with your troubles with the 1980. And I agree with you 100%, the so-called repair job is unacceptable. I have never opened the innards of the 5710, but I definitely take your word for the crappy design of the boards in the system. I'll need to find the repair paperwork that TGrant had done on the 5710 (its in storage) and see what was actually done.

Ironic thing is, my second 5710, prior to it being serviced several months ago it has been idle off and on for several years as well, and the front display has NEVER went dim at all nor had any hissing issues.

I am starting to feel bit uneasy in having TGrant do my deck again. Nothing personal against him of course, but I don't like the fact of paying that much money for a servicing job only to have issues with it several years later with light use.

I wish there was someone who knows these decks that would be willing to replace ALL the caps in this deck for a reasonable cost. I know these cap jobs are very time consuming and apparently the biggest fail of the Panasonic decks which is why Sony somewhat had the upper hand in this area. I would like all of my video decks to last at least a decade or more....as I don't abuse my equipment it should last a long time.

Even my Sony SLV-R1000 SVHS deck which I bought new since the 90's never gave me any problems.

If anyone knows of someone that is capable of doing a full cap job on these decks, I am all ears.

The Samsung SV-x000W models are Samsungs and don't really share anything with panasonic decks, they're based around the same mech and ICs as samsungs hi-fi vcrs from the time but with the extra digital stuff added (though they say made in Korea, while my samsungs from the time say made in Indonesia so maybe they were built elsewhere). The Pana AG/NW-W2 and W3 were based on those from what I can tell and not the other way around and are mostly similar other than not featuring a tuner. The W1 is completely different, and is a panasonic with the G-mech, sharing a bit with late 80s early 90s panasonics. The samsung ones do have a design flaw causing noise as noted shown in this video, but idk if the issues in actual Panasonics is a similar one. In theory maybe a dirty carbon brush (on the 1980 and similar the thing that sits on a metal post pressing on the top of the head drum) could cause issues, though if that one is dirty it's pretty straight forward to clean it.

Besides cap issues, one thing that can cause noise issues in Panas from that time is bad solder joints on the drum assembly, as shown in this video, and also noted in the K mechanism service manual and elsewhere. Later g-mech decks like the AG1970, NV-FS200 etc use the same drum assembly design so it's not limited to K decks.

I have also experienced a different noise issue on two later hi-fi panas (NV-HD620, and NV-FJ621), it's much more subtle causing occasional noise spikes or noise at some fixed point on the image, but haven't managed to find the cause of that one.

I share your frustration with these early 90s and late 80s panasonics, the pcbs are a clusterf**c. Additionally, panasonic often used these "hybrid IC" boards, and sometimes put SMD caps on them. They're like a fragile glass thing that they printed traces and resistors on or something. Of course the SMD caps are on the underside, and you have to desolder like 50 pins to get them out, and even then they are super fragile to work on. I'm not sure if it was used in the 1980 as it has very different video circuitry, but several others have it like the 1970, fs200, nv-hs1000 etc. (Example) SMD electrolytic caps are annoying enough to work with in the first place.

Sony used SMD caps a fair bit too, maybe they avoided it in those VHS VCRs but their older Hi8 camcorders are chock full of ones that go bad. Their Hi8 vcrs seem to often have issues too, especially the power supply, though the power supplies don't have SMD one sat least. Thankfully their newer camcorders with TBC/DNR seem to be much less affected by bad caps, otherwise they would be a hell to repair too.

Some brands of SMD caps were more prone to failure than others.

FWIW: I see signs of cap failure in some Canon as well as Sony Hi8/Video8 machines.

In some cases only certain boards were recapped, not ALL boards.
In some cases only SMD's were replaced, not all electrolytic caps.

Non-SMD electrolytic caps can go bad too over time, its just not as chronic an issue. They will likely last longer if powered periodically to keep them formed.