Panasonic PV-S9670?

[BarryTheCrab]

I am looking to complement my setup with a Panny, but I'm not flush with cash.
I have an ES-15 and a TBC-1000 I use with my JVC-S7800U, but a decent Panny would be great.
The 1970P would be my first choice, but since I am still in the shopping phase would a Panasonic PV-S9670 be a good acceptable choice? I know, no TBC, but some good decent machines lack those (the 1960P).
Since I do this as a hobby, sometimes for friends with a little money, can the S9670 serve me well?

[sanlyn]

You'll have to be very cautious with this VCR. It's circa 1999-2000 at a time whrn Panasonic VCR's *(and everyone else's vcrs) were being made from tin and plastic. You can probably find a paperweight that weighs more than the PV-S9670. It doesn't have the Dynamorphous metal heads that other 9600 series had at the time and actually costs slightly less than the Dynamorphous regular VHS models of the time. The capacitors and pc boards were about as cheap as they get, and cap aging usually results in dull color with a (usually) characteristic greenish color cast. The image is sharp but noisy, with the usual red chroma bleed and hard edge halos. The tape transports in this series were rather lightweight, so you'd look for a model that has recently been serviced and aligned. Tracking isn't as robust as the earlier PV-46xx and PV-S4670 series from 1996. After that year, Panny went downhill along with everyone else.

1996-2000 Panasonics were all time big sellers, notably because they oversharpened the image and made it look good on CRTs. What that means is that even if it works well, and even it sharpens up some 6-hour VHS tapes, you'll have a lot of post-process cleanup on your hands. At least these mainstream Pannies gave better results than comparable lower-level machines from SONY and JVC. Just don't expect high-end performance.