I have an HR-S7600 that is acting up due to extremely poor shipping by the seller, I got partially refunded so I wanna use the device to improve my VCR repair skills.
Tl;dr You have to force it to insert tapes, otherwise it loads and ejects halfway and the mechanism is generally unstable.
Issue 1: If you force it will play for 5 seconds then the tape would just cumulate on the right, then the device will turn off. I cleaned it up a bit, and messed up with the pinch roller, now that issue doesn't happen anymore.
Issue 2: Another problem I faced sometimes after ejecting the arms would go back to their position but the portion of the tape that was there wouldn't go back inside the tape and the tape would eject damaging a part left out. Again after greasing and messing up a bit with the 2 black reels, this now doesn't seem to happen anymore.
Issue 3: Sometimes when I insert a tape and press play, nothing comes on the output and the counter goes so fast as if it's fast-forwarding (but while showing the icon for play) see attached video. for this one I suspect the mode switch is the culprit, I have to figure out how to get to it and remove it properly. If anyone has better suggestions than the MS please let me know.
Issue 4: when I am able to get it to play, the image is not stable, there is a bit of horizontal jitter. Even the OSD messages are a bit teared/jagged on the side. No idea what is behind this but maybe it is linked to issue 5 below.
Issue 5: general mechanism jankiness/instability when inserting/ejecting. Not sure where to start fixing this exactly. so I am taking any suggestions. the tape seems to move smoother on one side than the other, I have to push and equalize the difference in stability on both sides. Some times during eject the device ejects halfway and turns off I have to turn it on and push the tapes to help the ejection.
Any repair suggestions are welcome.
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sverholm (08-15-2024)
If it's like my hr-s7700ms getting to the mode switch is a bit of a mission.There are 1 or 2 screws below the deck to remove for sure. Then i think 3 screws of the capstan motor have to be removed aswell ( been some time since i did it). See attached picture
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mbassiouny (08-09-2024)
@themaster1, j'ai exactement la même raquette pour moustiques sur la même table à côté de mon magnéto!
Merci, je vais essayer.
If anyone has suggestions as to what might be causing the stability issues in the picture I would love to hear it too. That way I can maximize the number of tried "repairs" every time I free up some time and open the deck.
Dang. There's so much wrong with that one that it is probably multiple things as you've pointed out. Something is probably bent in the loading basket if tapes aren't going in straight, or a tooth of a gear on one side might be out of time with the other gears. The playing at the wrong speed usually means the (audio control) AC head isn't detecting the speed that the tape was recorded in. You can reproduce that with about any VCR by just disconnecting the AC head's ribbon connector. I only know that because I've forgotten to reconnect the AC head after refurbishing a mechanism, but it's an easy fix to reconnect it and there's no permanent damage done by having that disconnected. The 7600 also has a dynamic drum which can cause a variety of issues - could be the head is stuck tilted to the point where the picture is unstable. Tape bunching up usually means the pinch roller isn't making good contact with capstan shaft, there's some issue with the capstan transferring its rotation to the spools, or the rotation of the spools isn't being detected correctly and you'd want to examine and clean any sensors or check for cracked solder joints on those. Those emitters and detectors are subject to shipping damage because they stick up quite a bit from the board and it doesn't take much of a drop during shipping to crack those solder joints. Mode switch cleaning is a must as well if you have any sort of loading or issue in any of the modes play, ff, rewind, shutting down at any point, or if it automatically tries to eject the tape or powering down without being asked. It's also possible that one of your PCBs is cracked. I had a 9800u that I ended up using for parts for other machines that would power on but not do much else, and I found out years later that the front display PCB was split right down the middle and not really a place that you'd check for issues. The parts from it fixed several other VCRs, so I wasn't super upset, but it's just a reminder that areas you don't suspect usually cause issues can be the culprit as well.
thank god, the EU 7600 has no Dynamic drum, so that's one less issue to worry about for me. I have the DD fail on hr-s8600 before (the Dynamic drum version) and it caused similar problems.
I don't think it is playing at the wrong speed since it is outputting nothing on the screen, I think it is just doing FF while on stop.
I will post an update when I try again. Thanks for your tips!
OSD tearing is something I've only seen on decks where the motherboard was zapped by a power outage during use. The unit was screwed. I may still have that one somewhere, NTSC JVC without TBC, parts only use.
