JVC HR-S7800U, poor Hi-Fi audio tracking
 

I have run across this issue on this VCR a few times. On some commercial tapes, very often this VCR will poorly track the Hi-Fi audio. Symptoms are mostly static/noise in the audio and sometimes the VCR momentarily drops to linear audio. The picture is fine for the most part, sometime I will get tracking noise at the bottom of the picture while the VCR's auto tracking tries to correct things. Whats odd is when I engage the manual tracking mode, the audio clears right up and tapes play fine. Tapes with only linear audio seem to play and track fine, no video issues. FWIW, all of these tapes track without issues in a generic cheapo GE 4-head hi-fi VCR.

Regarding the video calibration feature. I have it turned off, but turning it on does seem to help the auto tracking function to correctly lock onto the Hi-Fi audio track on most tapes.

The alignment is off. That's all.

Have it re-aligned by a service center. Jots Electronics in Dallas (Arlington, Texas) comes highly recommended. That's where we take our gear when repair is required (something that cannot be done with locally), even if it is in another state. They are/were JVC certified techs there.

Don't let their crap website fool you: http://www.jotselectronics.com -- the service is not amateur like the site.

Doh! Whats interesting is that the one SVHS tape that I recorded on this machine back in 2002 tracked fine. I also suppose this was one of the reasons why this machine was returned once in its life. I bought it as a sealed refurbished unit back in 2000 according to the sticker on the manual.

I will look into getting it repaired, but it'll have to wait until the home movies are all transferred. Luckily they lack Hi-Fi and play back fine. Too bad S-VHS never caught on, I forgot how good it looked.

Yes, you'll DEFINITELY want to leave it alone, since it recorded your videos misaligned.
Fixing the VCR would cause all hell to break lose trying to transfer those tapes.

Maybe best to just get another VCR. Been there, done that.

That SVHS tape is the only thing I remember ever recording on this VCR, so I don't have a library of "misaligned" tapes from it. At the time I recorded this TV program to SVHS, I also recorded it via the S-Video out to my camcorder with a Hi-8 tape as a backup (family member was on a TV program, made sure to preserve it). Too bad JVC closed their service center here in NJ, could have done walk in service. Used to be great in the old days, practically every major consumer electronics vendor had their HQ here with a service center.

Looking at my records, I didn't actually buy the 7800. Originally I ordered the 7600, and the vendor ran out and substituted. I viewed it as a downgrade because the 7600 actually had more features (REC level control with VU meters and dynamic drum, basically a 9600 with only 2MB Digipure).

Just an update on this. I can manually track just about every SP tape with Hi-Fi audio that I have to play noise free. EP Hi-Fi tapes are another story, but playing tapes at that speed wasn't this JVC's strongest suit to begin with.

It does sound like an alignment problem, this week I have transferred over 20 EP episodes using JVC VCRs.
I had tracking problems only on 2 episodes which I was able to switch to the other JVC VCR and get good transfers.
Of course if tape condition isn't ruled out, if the tapes are worn, it may be difficult for any VCR to play well.

Nothing mentioned here so far is really all that unusual, which you should (hopefully) find comforting. Analog video tapes -- and analog video in general -- is extremely erratic, highly sensitive to a long list of variables. Tracking is but one of these variables, when the topic is VHS tapes. This is the main reason high quality services likes ours have to keep a few stacks of VCRs on hand, because you never know what you'll run into. Dedicated video hobbyists have had to adopt the same multi-VCR system to get anywhere with their home recordings. I know it's a pain in the butt to deal with.

But it's also good to know that both of you understand what you're seeing.
These are both very accurate statements: