You're attempting video triage. That never ends well.
It's either
(1) wasting time with inferior gear,
(2) making excuses why lousy quality is actually good.
or
(3) both, as getting any results can be time-consuming, and requires willful acceptance of bad output
That was a great analogy, spot on.
At very minimum (not "good" but "better than nothing") the strong+crippled ES10/15 provides line TBC with non-TBC frame sync. It's clumsy, many tapes will fail, with it can work some % of the time.
Another decent option is JVC S-VHS with line TBC + one of the weaker "with TBC" frame sync items. But this can get messy, as many harm quality, and some of them have simply disappeared (for example, no more DVKs to be had, not for many months now -- which has driven up costs on those).