Panasonic AG1980 white streaks?
 

Hello, I’ve been using a Panasonic AG1980 for digital capturing. I had it serviced about 7-8 months ago and since then it’s been working fine for the most part. However recently I’ve noticed some occasional white streaks appear during playback. It’s possible the capacitors might be wearing out. I’m awaiting a response from the guy who fixed it last though my last few efforts to contact him in the past few months about some other things yielded no responses so I’m skeptic if he’ll get back to me. In case he doesn’t anyone recommend anyone around here for taking a possible look at it?? I’m an NJ resident and am looking for something in the $300-$400 range (I might consider $500-$600 if necessary). Again it’s functioning just about as good as it can but yeah I’m getting some occasional streaks which I’d rather get taken care of now before it gets potentially worse.

Who serviced it?

It sounds like caps issues. And this is the problem with fixing ONLY bad caps. Not ALL caps, which will also go bad in time. TGrant has been very guilty of this, and has fallen out of favor with many of us as a result.

It may be caps but the first thing I would do is check if the entire tape path (which includes the heads) is clean. That at least eliminates a dirty tape path as a possible cause of playback problems.

Do you have a picture of what it looks like? There are different issues that can cause different "types" of streaks.

I finally got a reply back from the gent who fixed it for me before. He says the video likely needs to be replaced. He says he’s willing to do it for $450.

That does that mean? Is he talking heads, a specific circuit board?

It is all tapes or only some tapes?
Is it repeatable? That is, the same placed on a give tape, or random locations?

Can you post a sample of the streaks so we can better guess at the source.

Around the guys head.

Attachment 14930

One quick thing you can try is to clean the contact point for the carbon brush on the video head drum and very lightly the carbon brush itself. It making bad contact can be a cause of white streaks. It's the metal bit that pushes on the top of the video head drum. Typically that causes streaks at random spots, while if the problem is elsewhere it's more common that streaks (whether black or white) happen on sharp transitions between black and white, often worse on worn tapes or tapes with a weak signal.

Other things that can cause white streaks is issues (or misadjustment) of the filtering of the signal from the video heads before (or during) the video processing, due to e.g bad capacitors. That type of issue may be better left to a professional.

This might address your issue. It expands on hodgey's post.

https://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_vcrfaq6.html#VCRFAQ_023

What a great website, DP, thanks for the link.

Another thought. If it is caused by static electricity buildup it may be worse at times of very low humidity.

Just curious, the sample image appears to be from Star Wars. Any specific reason for not ripping from a DVD or Blu-ray?

Because I’m backing of VHS’ at the moment.