Capacitors, manuals for AG-1980P and AG-5710? [GUIDE]
 

Now it's my turn to contribute a little bit to this community.

I've got an AG-5710p. I have service manuals for both the 5710 and 1980.

I've done a BIG pile of research:

• cap replacement recommendations from Panasonic over the last 25 years.
• Downloaded a ton of PDF files on that, plus
• several current catalogs
• cap availability and specs at digikey and mouser
• created cross reference spreadsheets for a lot of this
• validated via visual examination of caps and CBA's on my 5710

Attached is a multi-tab spreasheet with a lot of hopefully-helpful info:

• CBA list and ID's for 1980p and 5710, and how they correlate (or not)
• Cap list for both, how they correlate, Schematic C## values, CBA "series" (base Cnnn number) and marking Cnn numbers, and combined... all validated and cross correlated for 1980 and 5710
• Conversion from original Cap part numbers to current cap P/N's, then further to actual available cap's at both digikey and mouser (as of Dec 2022.)
• I just ordered a complete set of caps from Digikey. A little over US$70 including tax and shipping. (Mouser has NO stock and NO substitute at all for one cap :( )

A few notes and additional hints.

• Documented cap C#### is always a combination of two numbers:

1. The CBA printed cap # (usually a short number like C1-C99)
2. The CBA "series" base number, usually in the thousands, like C4800, C1000, etc.

• Some CBA's have a single series for the whole board
• Some CBA's, including the main board, have several physical sections
• NOTE that some caps are actually on the back side. These are always some kind of later engineering change and not well documented :)

• Panasonic has made MANY changes since these VCR's were made
• Whole series of caps have been updated to new series. Sometimes multiple version changes. Not easy to just convert from old to new
• More recently, they simply dropped manufacturing of ALL low capacitance 'lytic caps. There are no Panasonic 'lytic caps below 1 uF anymore.

Digikey and Mouser are both good vendors with interesting tools, but quite different. At this point I generally prefer Digikey tools.

(Note: you need to create a free account on each to use the tools I'll discuss)

Mouser:

• General part search is pretty nice: for each attribute you can select a value, OR select value then choose ">=" or "<="... so it's easy to say "16 volts OR MORE" for example. :)
• You can create a text file with part-number|myID|quantity rows, upload into the "Project Manager" as a "BOM" (then sort on myID to keep your own order, kinda) and see availability and cost of all parts at once
• You can add additional parts to a project
• You can NOT edit an existing part however. Easier to edit locally and upload a new set :(
• NOT always easy to find substitute parts for those unavailable... but there IS one good tool: once looking at a part, scroll down. There's a checkable list of attributes, then they will search for all parts that match. BUT it's not as flexible as their general part search...
• If a part is not available in stock, they don't suggest alternatives.

Digikey

• General part search is similarly nice
• For any given part, if not in stock there's a link to show suggested substitutions. Mostly nice.
• You can upload a list with "partNumber Quantity" rows. That becomes a list. Quick availability and cost of the whole pile.
• Easy to add parts to list, and to edit parts.
• Easy to both keep your desired part number, and add alternates (this is how part of my spreadsheet was made: the theoretical "correct" p/n, and separately which p/n I actually chose ;) )
• Overall, I found it relatively quick to edit my list of over 50 p/n's and turn it into a list of actually available parts. Nice.

NOTES on attached XLS file

• CAPS tab is currently in P/N order (then sorted by CBA and Cnn)
• P/N tab highlights parts at DigiKey and Mouser whose available p/n was different from what is supposedly "ideal".
• If you examine the formulae behind the columns for Series, cV and cCap (code for Volts, code for Cap) etc, you can see how Panasonic P/N's break down into various component parts
• I did NOT pull in the cap diameters. That would have been a Good Thing. Maybe someone else can add that.
• There are one or two remaining anomalies. I'm waiting for a message back from Panasonic to resolve one key question... but I went ahead and ordered caps anyway ;)

Here are additional PDF files I collected, possibly helpful

• AG-5710 Service Manual 1998. ALSO includes K-mech service/adjustment manual at the end (around p120?) (obviously scanned at not-perfect quality. Sorry :( )
• Several key Panasonic part discontinuation notices
• Documentation of Pan SMD caps, all series.

One last hint: to create an uploadable part list usable at Digikey,

• make a column in the P/N tab (AFTER the quantity col!)
• say "DK list" in row 1
• type this into row 2: =CONCATENATE(D2," ",F2)
• copy that to the rest of the rows
• now copy the whole shebang to your clipboard (select it all, press ctrl-C)
• log in to Digikey, create a list, and paste the above in.
• wait, wait, wait... then boom you have your parts list with cost and availability

Nice contribution. :)

BTW, there are TWO key differences between the 5710 and 1980:

• 1980 has a tuner
• 5710 has 25 pin RS-232 interface for external control

I don't care about either one, so those are meaningless to me.

BTW, I was briefly excited that the old B&H catalog LordSmurf shared showed some spec differences in the video sections between the two: 5710 with 47dB S/N, 1980 44dB... and they talked about Digital Noise Reduction on the 5710...

...until I dug in. Just marketing stuff.

Both are identical circuitry.
Both have 44dB S/N on VHS, 47dB on S-VHS
Both have DNR in their TBC circuits.

Good info and thanks. I was probably at least partly responsible for the last info which was full of errors. IIRC and its been years ago I just ordered a bunch of caps that were the same uf value (digikey) and at least the minimum voltage value.
Sometimes it is hard to to get matching capacitance and voltage ratings in a replacement part. But yes some (many?) errors also probably. Now my real problem is I am just not good at smd compomet replacement. Too small and my eyesight is shite especially depth perception. I under stand the mechanics of it having held a F level NASA certification as well as commercial aerospace soldering certification. Well we all got problems right ha ha. Good Holidays all

Definitely not going to be easy. I hope to use a nice big magnifying glass (ideal: a dissecting microscope ;) )AND, I get to play with an amazing soldering tool, that produces instantaneous microwave radiation between the tips! Instant heat, instant off.

-- merged --

Oops.

I just now received (FedEx delays) my Digikey order. I made a mistake: cell D3 in the current spreadsheet should be for a radial cap but I accidentally chose an SMD.

A more appropriate part, still available and with good ripple/ESR is Nichicon UHE2A560MPD

Updated spreadsheet attached.

This is a great post MrPete!

I am working on something similar for the AG-1980p specifically because as you noted, there are significant differences in the main board (and it seems like more caps in general in the AG-1980P). I started by downloading the "AG-1980_caps" spreadsheet from the last comment on this post: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr...-1980-a-6.html. I painstakingly validated every part number for every board against the AG-1980P service manual and even found 3 typos.

I then looked up the values you had in your spreadsheet for replacement part numbers and input them into my spreadsheet. Now there are 14 capacitors that are exclusive to the AG-1980P and 2 or 3 exclusive to the AG-5710 (67 distinct part numbers on 1980 vs 54 on the 5710). Originally the AG-1980 had 65 distinct values, but mine has 2 additional electrolytic through hole cans (C1016 and C1022) in the power supply that aren't mentioned in the service manual, so I added them (though I have no original part number for those).

As you pointed out, the original part numbers were discontinued, and in some cases, the immediate replacement was discontinued, etc. So I am left with 14 part numbers I couldn't pull from your spreadsheet (unique to AG-1980 I suppose) and I don't have original numbers for 2 power supply caps, so voltage+capacitance+physical size was as close as I could get for those (unless you have another suggestion). I am hoping avoiding having to "guess" on these 14 caps and was wondering if they might be lurking in your "cross reference spreadsheet" you mentioned in your initial post. If not, it's easy for me to identify voltage and capacitance, but guessing size involves pulling the board(s) and physically measuring. Also, I don't really know the differences between the respective "series" of capacitors, whether a cap was originally bipolar, etc. So hoping you can help me out with info for these 14 caps if you have it:

ECA1AGE221
ECEA0JKA221
ECEA0JKN220
ECEA1AKS330
ECEA1CA470P
ECEA1CKS330
ECEA1EA4R7
ECEA1EKS3R3
ECEV1CA470P
ECEV1CAN4R7
ECEV1EA100
ECEV1HA3R3
EECF5R5U104
VCEA1HAC3R3

Sometimes, the easiest thing is to search online ;)
Not all are in stock, but finding specs wasn't difficult for the first few.


I don't have time at the moment to fill this in... but I think you can take it from here. We would all benefit I'm sure! If you can fill in the cap board/locations, that would be awesome...


ECA1AGE221 https://www.tedss.com/2020117020
ECEA0JKA221 https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...c/ECE-A0JKA221
ECEA0JKN220 https://na.industrial.panasonic.com/...59/model/87494
ECEA1AKS330 https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...c/ECE-A1AKS330
ECEA1CA470P
ECEA1CKS330
ECEA1EA4R7
ECEA1EKS3R3
ECEV1CA470P
ECEV1CAN4R7
ECEV1EA100
ECEV1HA3R3
EECF5R5U104
VCEA1HAC3R3

Hello,
Sorry to revive this old thread. I bought a Panasonic AG-1980P for a ridiculous price and I would like to try to recap it with a friend (who is better than me for the SMD).

I'm looking for a sheet of all the caps and new equivalent / digikey or mouser parts #. It seems that mistateo is the one with the "best" updated excel sheet list but still not 100% complete from what I understand.

Is anybody here have a 100% complete updated parts list for digikey/mouser please ? I'm not 100% to find myself the compatible parts, that's why my friend with do the solder job hehe.

Thanks a lot.

I've refurbished probably about 15 AG1980s and wouldn't recommend doing a full recap (which I did do once - took forever and not sure the image was discernibly better at the end). 95% of the time, recapping the TBC board, front two boards, head amp, and the few caps below the head drum will restore all functionality. The power supply board can be recapped as well, but "professional" refurbishing services usually don't even bother with the power supply, head amp, or caps below the video head. I recap the power supply on mine just for future proofing, but it's not essential. Plus, there's the possibility that something gets damaged along the way during disassembly/assembly, so I'd recommend just starting with the TBC and front display first and if that works, you can decide if you really want to recap more or not.

It's mainly heat that causes caps to fail, so you might want to use a thermal camera to show which areas get hot on the main boards during normal operation to determine selectively which caps are most likely to have failed and test those first in-circuit.

Also, keep in mind that refurbishing involves some work on the deck mechanism itself rather than just recapping. You'll want to re-lubricate the tape guide tracks, anything that is held down with a split washer, remove the capstan motor shaft to re-lubricate and clean that, and lubricate the the pinch roller assembly. Ideally you'd clean the mode switch and replace the loading motor coupler as well. Doing some of those things can mess up the timing which can be very annoying to re-align if you haven't done this sort of thing before. The service manual is out there, but retiming the mechanism is way easier said than done at least the first few times.

That's really not very many. :unsure:

#1- That's terrible advice.
#2- You're missing the point of recap.

Recapping isn't about "the image looking better", but the unit functioning properly, or even not functioning at all.

Bad caps cause everything from
- front panel failing -- not just lights, but sliders and buttons
- field TBC actually making the image unstable, or off-value (too bright when engaged, added chroma noise, etc)
- emitting high pitched noises that are excessive and unreasonable (usually from internal power brick(
- sensors failing, which causes various U errors
- more serious issues like no image
- etc

These caps are all now 20-30 years old, and were never rated for that lifespan. Any caps that are "fine" now probably won't be in coming months. This is why many of us got pissed at TGrant in past years, as he'd only replace the then-bad caps. When the unit re-failed again, from not properly having all caps replaced, he wanted another $500+ to repair it. Honestly, it's a good scam, a way to ensure returning customers suckers.

Can you imagine taking your car in to get the spark plugs replaced, but they only changed the "bad plugs"? Well, all of the plugs were worn! How shitty would it be to have another plug fail in 2-3 months, and the shop insists you pay them another high repair fee? But then they still replace just the new bad plug, and you still have bad plugs in the car! WTF?

This is really no different. None.

When I refurb JVC VCRs (or TBCs, etc), my goal is for those to last another decade. Not another 90 days, or 6 months, or even 6 years. My goal is a decade. Now, I don't "guarantee" a decade obviously, but I sure as hell put in the effort and time to try. I take pride in my work, which is sadly a lost ethic these days. And I do have gear out there, from 7 years ago when I started to refurb for others, that is still working great for those owners. Plus most of my own gear from the 90s and 00s is still fine. (Most of my gear losses were me making dumb mistakes, like leaving a TBC on for days, or tripping and dropping the VCR down the stairs.)

And this is a huge problem, a huge red flag about the quality of the refurb'er. If the PSU is not addressed, the unit sounds like it's going to self-destruct within minutes. It emits all sorts of horrible noises, from a hissing snake, to a shrieking harpy.

That's not a good reason. Be more careful.

Eh. Still a good tip. But I wouldn't entirely rely on heat emission to locate bad caps.

Yep. :congrats:

"some work". Understatement of the year? :laugh:

Is this specific advice to the AG-1980P? Because in general, I've never seen a need to do anything with a mode switch. Those tend to outlast the rest of a VCR, or the switch fails independent of being "dirty" in some way. For the most part, it's always been cheap POS VCRs from Funai/etc that had mode switch problems of any kind. Not S-VHS VCRs, certainly not the better units with line TBC.

Most often, I run into failed transport motors, grinded gears, damaged heads, brake issues -- not mode switches in any way. In 25+ years of self-repairing VCRs, I've only run into a mode switch issue once. I took it apart, opened the switch, saw nothing wrong whatsoever, and put it back together. Partially reassemble deck for testing. And then it worked as mysteriously as it stopped. It wasn't dirty, or dusty, and may have simply been loosened from droppage in shipping. I took it apart again, for cleaning, to "be thorough", before full proper reassemble. While cleaning extracted some dirt, it was really nothing remarkable.

I don't like to remove transports unless necessary. It's too easy to break something, so you have to go slower, and be super careful.

This video gave me a chuckle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIQg0oSw7uE
My first JVC S-VHS repair was a 3800, decades ago now. There are cheat methods to extract JVC transports, and he did it the slow "proper" frustrating way. I wonder if he knows the lazy/cheat method, and is simply showing proper for Youtube?

To me, "clean the mode switch" is odd dogma, sort of like VCR newbies that think cleaning the VCR heads (and often wrong at that) is a fix-all to cure whatever ails the deck. Seriously, no power, and too often advice is "clean the heads". I just do not understand this.

I look at it a bit differently when it comes to lifetime of low heat exposed caps.

Here's an example of one originally used in the AG1980: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/667-ECE-A1CKA220

That's a 16V 22uF, 85C, 1000 hour mini capacitor.

The 1000 hour rating is assuming it is running at max ripple current, voltage, and rated temp that entire time.

If you look at a calculator like this:
https://eepower.com/tools/electrolyt...e-calculator/#

...and use the values on my example 16V 22uF mini Panasonic capacitor and assume that a 16V cap is probably being used at 12V or less and the ambient temperature is 30C (86 degrees F), you come up with an operating lifetime estimate of 60,000 hours or so of continuous 24/7 use.

Check out Panasonic's technical documentation here on page 13: https://industrial.panasonic.com/con...calGuide_e.pdf This one is more interesting because it shows a second time graph of expected life if the capacitor in question is used 8 hours a day for decades as opposed to continuous use and it suggests a lifetime of 30 yeas or more is reasonable to expect for most caps not exposed to high heat, or possibly longer if used for less than that, which most of these VCRs would have been used for far less than that and have been sitting unused in storage for a decade of that.

On the VCR that I did the full-full recap with, I did go back and test all of the caps that were pulled and 95% of them tested well within rated capacitance and had very similar ESR's to the brand new ones of the same model number that I replaced them with - hence in retrospect, there probably was no benefit (other than future proofing) to replace those. Ya, they are ticking time bombs, but with a 60,000 hour fuse that only burns while in use. The 5% that were out of spec were in high heat areas. I've also never seen a physically leaking mini Panasonic cap on an AG1980's main board either, but would replace those if seen.

I of course do check the ESR's in circuit of the high heat area capacitors and really there's only one spot on the main board that tends to have some out of spec caps due to heat exposure which is less than 10 caps there outside of the caps that I always replace outside of the aforementioned high failure rate boards. The ESR and capacitance on those caps is probably the equivalent of an "hour counter" on these - so if you pull them and see they are well within spec, you absolutely have a low hour unit.

As for the screeching power supply - that's almost always caused by caps on the timer board causing some sort of odd harmonic resonance thing to occur back at the power supply. It actually persisted AFTER I did the full-full recap on the AG1980 that I mentioned took forever. In that case, there was a SECOND thing that can cause it even with brand new caps - it's the specific characteristics of the caps selected for the power supply caps which does make sense if there's a physical "resonance" or "harmonic" thing going on which is what sound is after all. I went back and replaced some of the already new capacitors on the power supply with ones of slightly different physical sizes and the screeching went away completely - we're talking dead silent. The technical term for this is the "piezoelectric effect" or sometimes also called "singing capacitors." Granted, it is fairly rare for electrolytic capacitors to sing and it's much more common with ceramic capacitors. It could be that the electrolytic capacitors affect the ceramic capacitors or the main transformer on the power supply that actually results in the noise. I was going crazy for a while, even swapped the main transformer with a different power supply that didn't make noise (interestingly/retrospectively it was one that was not recapped yet) and transformer swap did not fix the screeching. So in that case, the original caps did not cause screeching when the NEW caps did (at least with that specific combo of new caps I originally had used).

As for your analogy on only replacing all spark plugs at once... I'd say a better analogy would be replacing something that has a lower failure rate at the same time as something that has a high failure rate - such as replacing the spark plug wires at the same time you replace the spark plugs. Yes, spark plug wires can go bad, but if the car runs fine and they test fine at the time of replacing the spark plugs, you don't need to always replace the spark plug wires. I do test a bunch of the main board caps in circuit and they almost never are bad - unless they are located in high heat areas as mentioned above.

I do get the sentiment that lots of caps predictably do go bad after decades in many devices, but the caps originally used in the AG1980 are actually pretty reliable other than the problem boards which have high heat exposure - and that's not even their fault - that's expected with any capacitor in a high heat area. I've run across plenty of VCRs where different manufacturers have caps of different colors outer plastic and you can predict which ones will be bad based on the capacitor wrapper/manufacturer even in low heat areas. Luckily, those Panasonic mini capacitors are much better than average if not exposed to high heat it turns out.

Since we're conversing here about AG-1980P, how are you with rebuilding decks with multiple issues?

I have
- 1 that contains a screeching harpy
- 1 that is frankensteined. The transport has vibration that doesn't seem to affect anything, just makes vibration noises. It works well when it works, but keeps jumping randomly to U errors, probably because of sensor failures.
- 2 that are wrecked, and yet are not lost causes. Nothing missing that I can see, nothing damaged. Deter rejected the wrecks.

We should chat. I'm open to having you fix some.

- I need my harpy fixed. Though Deter is probably going to get that one. Maybe. I'm open.
- I want the frankenstein analyzed. Fixing would be good.
- I've been looking for somebody that I think can tackle the wrecks. And it's more for them than it is for me. I want to find somebody that can repair these rougher decks. Deter and TGrant are now narrowing their willingness to fix decks, and longer term that won't work, as more and more of these units are getting pretty fubar.

Thanks a lot for all these informations. We will probably try to recap 1 section at a time, see if everything still works, then continue on the next section, etc.

If you have recapped 15 AG-1980P, i guess you have some kind of parts list somewhere to order from digikey or mouser? That's what i'm really looking for. The one I have does not seems to be 100% up to date.

Please let me know, thank you.

I don't have an actual current parts list since availability of different parts changes and I did various rounds of ordering combined with orders of caps for other projects at the same time. I also ordered caps from that starting excel sheet and anything that was out of stock I just used the Mouser search function with filters for the capacitance and voltage and used the search filters to get to similar caps and choose low ESR or low impedance variants when possible. Everyone has their opinions on what brands to use, but given this is a Panasonic VCR, I tend to prefer Panasonic caps or Nichicon/Rubycon when those aren't available.

But 15 is a lot if on a for personal use DIY hobby basis. Many folks are likely content to do just one or two - their own unit.

Also. many folks are looking not for a 25 year estimated remaining life but one to get them through their current project.

Considering the AG-1980 there is a big difference between doing a few boards and all the boards. (The main board is a bitch to remove/get at, as are soldered on daughter cards ). The surface mounted electrolytics are by far the most common problem parts, most other electrolytics rarely. (Consider the AG-1970 apparently has few cap issues - no SMDs). If not in the business of recapping for others on a paying basis it becomes a personal choice. And it is one that should be discussed with the paying client. In terms of time and parts (i.e., cost) it makes a very substantial difference.

If your own machine you can always go back and do more if necessary to end up with a final result that is satisfactory to you.

Definitely agree with that. But I didn't think we were talking about personal usage here, but rather refurb'ing AG-1980Ps for sale to others. Perhaps I misunderstood something somewhere?

Hi all... mostly just checking in. A *LOT* of life has happened (including loss of my 23 year coworker and close fam friend :( )... but I am finally finally ramping up to actually DO the recap that I planned when writing this thread!

My condolences. :(

Loss is disruptive to our plans, to our families, to everything. It takes time to resume, when possible. So after a year away, welcome back.

My condolences as well.

Were you going to do a full recap, or just the boards that are likely to need it? I'm fairly confident that none of the professional services recap everything, but I could be wrong.

You'll want to be sure to inspect the pinch roller for cracks and always replace the loading motor coupler as well. Original pinch rollers can be a bit hard to find, but I've found some brand new ones that are the appropriate dimensions and have added the right bearing at the right depth that I'll be listing on ebay for others to restore theirs.

When cleaning the original pinch roller (assuming it isn't cracked), don't use alcohol on it - can use either naphtha/lighter fluid or tape cleaners such as American Recorder S-721H - MSDS says it's pure hexane - so you could just use hexane as well.

@aramkolt I'm going to take it one CBA at a time to start. I already have caps for everything.

I' also looking into sources for the maintenance parts. Will do a separate thread for that.