Chroma and Tracking Issue With Panasonic AG-1970
 

Hey everyone, new member here!

I’ve had broken Panasonic AG-1970 fall in my lap recently. It would immediately eject a vhs after inserting. I've never repaired analog video devices or use them, but I'm comfortable with maintenance and small repairs on reel to reels and other analog audio equipment so I felt like it was worth a shot and a good excuse to get into the hobby. After a week with it on the table I’ve been able to get it operational again (hooray!) but I’ve run into a new obstacle after hooking it up. As you can see in the video below, the tracking seems to need adjusting, even after manually adjusting the tracking using the button controls and adjusting the screws by the head (it was previously much worse than this). The chroma is all over the place and flickering to extremes as well. I’m very new to the world of vcr and vhs so I may just in be over my head. Any advice on how to troubleshoot these issues or proceed would be much appreciated!

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The AG-1970 is one in particular that you should be avoided and probably isn't worth your time. There's a specific board on it that fails that uses printed components on a ceramic board where you just can't solder in replacement parts and they almost always have failed.

There's a good video on YouTube here that explains the issue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho_GIFR2NhA

You can skip to the 9 minute mark to see that explanation of the part that fails.


He does confuse that the 1980 also has the issue, but it doesn't actually have that type of board in it luckily.


If you are going for panasonic, The model you want is the AG1980 which does usually require recapping of the YC/TBC board at minimum and some servicing to the mechanism and that doesn't have the unrepairable board on it.