Archer Video Enhancer/Stabilizer, photos + quick review
 

Attached are several images of the Archer Video Enhancer/Stabilizer, first sold in 1984 by Radio Shack. Archer was a house brand label. These come from an ioffer.com auction, where somebody (an original owner, I believe) was selling his gear.

I tried Archer gear about 7 years ago, and was largely unimpressed.I had both the proc amp and the detailer/sharpener units, which ran $99 each new from the Radio Shack catalog. I paid about $40 each, and then here's my ad where I sold them for $20 each + shipping. (I knew the person who bought them, and he re-sold then a few years later on another site.)

Compared to Vidicraft gear, Archer was crap. The dials had a lot of play, making it hard to make precise or slow adjustments. Even then, the adjustments to the signal would often make it "go wonky" or add noise to the picture. You could realistically only use them for very mild adjustments -- not much different from the proc amp controls found on the AVT-8710 TBC. It was better than nothing, but only marginally so.

There's a pretty decent video on Youtube: