Any place to buy JVC VCR parts?
 

Hello,
Roy here,

Hoping you all could steer me in the right direction? Finding parts for my four JVC HR-S7800U VCRs have been increasing difficult over the years. Is there a source(s) for parts? At this time I'm in search of the following... LP40370-001E ROLLER ARM ASSY, QAR0119-001 STATOR ASSY and LP20617-008A DRUM SUB ASSY.

Thanks in advance,
Roy

There are a few random sites (and random offline store), with a few random parts. But we're now 20+ years removed from JVC manufacturing any of this. This stuff was long ago clearanced out, recycled, or trashed, as it costs serious money to warehouse inventory for decades.

I'm not aware of anywhere that specifically carries 7800 parts.

This is why most of us have parts/donor decks to pull from.

But you may be in luck. At this exact moment (Dec 2024), I actually have a extra non-working 7800, that I'd consider selling off for the eBay parts rate for this model, which is about $200 total shipped. (For comparison, the BS "working/tested" decks average about $450 tax/shipped.) This 7800 does not appear to have ever been picked from, and I never did for certain. It may even be reparable, but I've not had time or desire to try. The tape holder assembly is collapsed (thus gate doesn't close), and the LED is failed. But the head cylinder seems fine, rollers, etc. All the parts you'd need.

Just these parts alone -- LP40370-001E ROLLER ARM ASSY, QAR0119-001 STATOR ASSY, LP20617-008A DRUM SUB ASSY -- probably would have run at least $100 anyway. So for another $100, you get anything else you may need now, or in the future. It's not uncommon to think you just need A/B/C to make it whole again, but after replacing A/B/C you realize you need a new D or even D/E/F/G/etc.

Those 7800 motors are cranky, so it never hurts to have a spare. (7800 is a pre-V10, and most V10 have failed due to bad motors.)

I've looked for VCR parts myself and I can't find any place other than eBay, any other website will be either a scam or an outdated page that leads to check out but no actual order will be fulfilled. If you can't find your part on eBay it is highly likely it is not available. If we are talking about generics such as belts, screws, electronic components, certain tools, then that's a different story.

If you are into Japanese and Russian websites and willing to take the risks of expensive shipping that's another option but there is always a chance of being scammed.

And lastly the easiest way of getting parts is used machines, You can't get brand new parts but if you are lucky you can get good condition parts.

New old stock of these will be over $2000 easy.

I was actually thinking back to prices we paid new back in the 2000s. There's really no comps out there for what a new (NOS) part would run now. $200, $2K, no idea. I just know it won't be less than the $100 it was years ago.

What always gets me is this uncanny situation:

(1) I'll acquire something unexpected, not sure if/when I'll need it, or if/when I'll sell it to others.
(2) And then, almost immediately after, a person is suddenly looking for the same something. Whoa! :eek:

... then the person passes on it. :huh1: :screwy:

I hope that doesn't happen here. But if it does, seriously, WTF? The stars align, and some people just cannot take the luck/blessing they've been given. I seize opportunities (and celebrate the win), I don't run from them. Not everybody is that wise, it seems.

We're talking 48 hours here. I fully expected to put this 7800 in my attic, into my "VCR graveyard". So seeing this post blew my mind. It's happened several times lately, exact situation. I'm like a video genie -- but don't rub me.

https://www.smcelectronics.com/vcrele.htm

this one got some (mode switches, motors, memory backup etc.., many brands)

That person hasn’t answered a single email or phone message in 3 years.
I drove to the previous store front because I live in the area.
Maybe he is now moved to Brockton. I’d love to know if anyone gets a response.

Hello all,

As of this posting, I've pulled the trigger for a "working/tested 4800" from eBay @ $124.00 delivered. We shall see how this shakes out.

Thanks to All who have takin the time to respond in my hour of need,

Roy

Hopefully that 4800 has what you need, but do realize it's not 100% fully identical.

I guess my deck will go in the attic.

I believe the parts I require are? According to the service manual.

For these specific parts, I think so.

My worry is if you need more, and those might not be. I'm forward-thinking when it comes to parts for this old gear.

I looked at eBay 4800s before even replying to this thread, and wasn't impressed by the numbers. $125 similar model vs. $200 identical model was really a no-brainer, $75 is nothing in the video world, a rounding error. (Was that $125 also including tax and shipping?) Especially since I know how to pack gear, and eBay sellers are notorious idiots when it comes to packing VCRs.

Good luck, I hope it works for you.

Forward-thinking is always a good thing. Hopefully this purchase of the 4800 will serve my purpose for the time being, assuming it's in working order. It's been my limited experience w/eBay that when sellers accepts returns, they tend to be more careful/accurate with "working/tested" claims and their packaging techniques. It was $125.00 delivered.

Thanks for the "Good luck", I'll take all I can get.

As I said above, those websites are very old and you can place an order, you card will not be charged, your order will not get fulfilled. Who would sell a mode switch for $6 in 2024?

There's a lot of ghost sites with TBCs, too. Some of the old Yahoo storefront type templates are easy to spot. I don't understand how a site can be abandoned for decades, and still be online. It'd have to be self-hosted on an obsolete dedicated server, as normal hosting and VPS forces updates after some time.

SMC is a live site, updated just 2 weeks ago.

How embarrassing for them.

1999 called, they want their site back. :laugh:

No one said it is not live, otherwise how can you place an order if it is not live?

FWIW the SMC site copyright reads 1998-2024. No guarantee it is current but at least someone took the trouble to update the year, a somewhat encouraging sign.

There are scripts that automatically update the year. At the very bottom of this site is 2002-2024, but we never update that. On Jan 1, every page will show 2002-2025.

SMC shows updated parts (belts) arrived in November, but if ANYONE can get a hold of this company we could put this to bed.

There is nothing to put to rest, the business is active as seen in their front page, Do they have VCR special parts? That's what you need to find out, like I did numerous times with different websites, Even Sears parts had video drums listed and I placed orders but my credit card never got charged, when try to inquire about the order they will just cancel it.

Hi All,

My “parts” (one JVC HR-S4800U) arrived yesterday. Very happy my Luck held up. Packaging was done with care, I put it through its paces and am very happy with this find.

Following up on post #21…

Purchased the 4800 for parts for two of my 7800’s.

VCR #1… I had serviced for a squeaky drum. A non- 7800 drum and stator was used for a replacement. I wanted to get this VCR back to stock. See attached.

Attached VCR #1 pictures,

20241210_041716

20241210_041721

20241210_042732

20241210_073901

VCR #3… Was suffering from “ghost loading/ejecting” (not sure if is the tech. description). I had it serviced, according to the tech. found the cassette basket had shifted and was rubbing on the circuit board (don’t know, I’m not a tech.). Repairs were made, all better now. See attached.

Attached VCR #3 pictures,

20241210_100509

20241210_100515

20241210_100521

20241210_101948

20241214_075105

Got to thinking…

If one has a Pana ES-xx in their workflow, why would you need/require a VCR w/an on-board TBC?

Within a week or so I will be listing, for sale, VCR #1 & #3 for $225.00 each, plus shipping on eBay. For my fellow travelers here and another forum I enjoy, the price is $175.00 each, plus shipping.

PM me if you have questions and are interested.

Thanks in advance,
Roy

That packaging job is atrocious. Those exact U-Haul boxes are thin single corrugated, and always crush when used for shipping, as is the case here. Those are moving boxes, not shipping boxes. I've see this many times before. That's how decks get destroyed in the mail. When shipping VCRs, don't copy what that person did.

That bubble wrap isn't secured (taped) to anything. A VCR can slide right out of it, and then it's like not having any bubbles at all.

If one has a bicycle, why do they need a car?

Thanks for repairing those units, we need more people like you, aramkolt and others to keep a supply of working machines in the hobby, we are getting old, we need young people to carry on in this path.

Thank you :-)

Relatively new to this hobby and it has been a interesting journey, always something new to learn.

@ lordsmurf…
You confuse me… I’ll admit it doesn’t take much these days.

https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...s-vcr-tbc.html

JVC VCR TBCs are fairly transparent, doing the job as intended, and not much else. The output is almost always better.

Panasonic ES DVD recorders are not at all transparent, and add issues. Video quality suffers, audio quality can have issues, and even usability can be a big PITA. Those Panasonic recorders are simply "better than nothing", not better than JVC/Panasonic with-TBC VCRs.

The DVD recorder "works" in the same way as a typical commuter would find a bicycle to "work" instead of a car. It's a fairly miserable experience ... but hey, "it works!" :screwy:

That link lays it out pretty well, and lists the reason to NOT use a DVD recorder in place of actual TBCs.

If one has a Pana ES-xx in their workflow, why would you need/require a VCR w/an on-board TBC?

Not wasting any more energy with this.

This can get pedantic fast.

Why do you need/require to convert VHS, for that matter? Just play the tapes in a ratty old thrift store VCR, because that work too.

There's a difference between
- doing something right
- doing something wrong
- doing something "in the middle" (not right, not wrong), or halfway, aka half-assed ... (see also "bang for the buck" methods)
- not doing something

So
- JVC/Panasonic VCR with TBC = right
- no TBC = wrong
- DVD recorders = half-assed
- thrift store VCR to watch, forget converting = not at all

Reading this again .... are you asking the question backwards? :hmm:

As in you acquired the ES10/15 recorder first ... and later want to add a better VCR? :question:

The ideal answer is to simply NOT use that DVD recorder anymore. It was not intended to act as an external TBC (line, not frame), and in fact doesn't do great at. Get the better VCR, use it. Set the ES10/15 aside for tearing-type needs.

I never understand when people feel the need to use something just because they bought/acquired it. In this case, it's either part of the replacement (displaced by the a VCR), or it was just a mistaken purchase. That happens, move on.

Pacino's line from The Godfather Part 3 "Just When I Thought I Was Out They Pull Me Back In"

With my current setup, my milage/experience with the 7800 on board TBC has been less than impressive.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...pped-frames%29 Post #21

I haven't done much testing with the 7xxx series - though I think I have a 7500 and 7600 kicking around here somewhere.

The one thing I noticed with my very limited testing is that on least one of them that image would get vertically jumpy with some commercially recorded tapes (and presumably would also do so with home tapes). I hadn't really seen the output be worse when enabling the TBC on other line-TBC containing JVCs. Could be my specific unit or that tape just has an issue though (It didn't do it with all tapes, just tried like 3 test tapes). Could also be that those need a recap of their TBC card - I believe the TBC on those is in a daughter board that is soldered down to the main board and fully enclosed in metal shielding, so not super easy to get at without fully disassembling the machine. Even then, I'm not sure if there's many electrolytic caps in there that could go bad, but they'd be at higher risk if that card gets warm since they are fully enclosed with metal shielding. JVC would have probably gotten a lot of flack if their new TBC models back in 1997 or whenever this was made commercial tape playback jittery, though may not have been an issue for CRTs which are better at handling those sorts of timing problems.

:laugh: I see his order forms have a Brockton address where as some other page has the Easton plaza address, which is now vacated. Been there.
For kicks I Google-Earthed the Brockton location. A rundown house seeming a bit, er, dicey by appearance.
But then rotate the view and there's a mini-mansion across the street.
I'm sure I've been by the place a couple hundred times, surely I'll get a chance to do a look see, but it might be after Christmas. I don't know why this has become a quest, it's not a big deal, but if I'm in that area then a drive-by is certain. Maybe I'll tie a note to a brick as I barrel past the house at a high rate of speed.

Valid observations too be sure.

My evaluation was done with the four 7800s I have, with the same Pana. All of the 7800s returned the same or very similar statistics.

Just happen to know a fellow traveler with a “new in the box 7800”. Perhaps he can donate it for further testing. Just kidding, lol.

Can only speak for myself. Moving forward, I stand by my evaluations and will continue to do captures accordantly. For the time being, I am quite satisfied with the captures with the Pana included in the workflow. Perhaps in the near/far future, I’ll pull the trigger on a line TBC and add it to the workflow.

A good capture indeed! I'd say if you aren't using the line TBC because an ES10 or 15 is being used for passthrough, there's no reason to go with the 7800 over probably any of the other HR-S series, though the 3800/4800 are probably the closest hardware-wise to the 7800 otherwise. It does help that it's a relatively bright scene, where capture cards seem to struggle is mostly dark scenes because there's a lot less dynamic range to work with and a lot of the colors get rounded to mostly the same narrow range limited values and even more the case if you're working with lower bit depth. There should at least be a theoretical advantage to capturing in 10 bit in low contrast scenes as long as you aren't passing it through a device that truncates the bit depth to less than 10 bits - so like the TBC-1000 for example is 8 bit. There'd be no point in capturing in 10 bit if that is in your chain. I don't know what bit depth the ES10/15 are, but I'm guessing it's effectively less than the built in line TBCs in most VCRs that have it, hence you get what looks like posterization or analog to digital and back to analog artifacts/loss of grain/noise reduction effects which lose some of the detail along with it.

The posterization that is described coming from ES10/15 to me just says it likely uses a relatively low bit depth DAC or ADC which makes similar values all end up rounding to the same value - like in your sample clip there, the sky is quite uniformly blue and there really isn't the typical "grain" of analog video still there - not that it's a bad thing necessarily - it probably looks more like how a CRT would display it. It also could have something to do with the losses to MP4 encoding where that can happen again. It's a form of noise reduction essentially, but also a type of detail loss which may or may not have the look you're going for.

While not exactly the same comparison, these are a couple of tests I did with two different capture devices coming off of the same HR-S9800U with the line TBC on. One is a DV encode by the ADVC-110 via S-Video which I would argue basically causes posterization as well due to the DV codec, and the other is an SDI capture to ProRes422HQ which is supposed to be "visually lossless." The darker image for the DV capture could be because I had the IRE switch set to 7.5IRE for black, which is what NTSC is supposed to be, but it does mean if some things are slightly below 7.5, they'll be set to black anyway which would appear as crushed blacks.

Here's the video on YouTube right at where that frame is from if you're curious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FqwURo4j6U&t=26s

Attachment 18644

Attachment 18645


I'm guessing "Ringing" and "oversharpening" may come to mind, but the source is a commercially produced VHS tape of a music video from 1985, so the source was undoubtedly originally shot in U-matic and probably has gone a few generations before making it to the VHS tape. U-Matic is pretty well-known for ringing. I actually bought a bunch of random Umatic music videos to see how they transfer compared to what's currently on say YouTube as the "official" videos for some of these older songs. I think I can do better especially with a what I assume is a 3rd or 4th generation U-Matic tape as opposed to a VHS that is made from a 3rd or 4th generation U-Matic tape haha.

Short clips containing this frame also attached. Dark scenes are kind of struggles for captures because this is a dark scene with low dynamic range as mentioned above.

Thank you

Those are interesting capture comparisons, and valuable feedback. I dabbled for just a minute with DV (ADS PyroA/V link). Probably another rookie move on my behalf using the Pyro. Admittedly, I didn’t do any further exploring into DV beyond that. I will say, that I’m the last fellow traveler that should be asked for a proper critiquing for any capture. I directly give thanks and credit to what little I do know about critiquing captures to the link I pointed to in post #29 above. As well as to all the fellow travelers that took the time to contribute and participate in it. I will never look at captures the same way, ever again, .

I’ve attached a darker scene/snip of the same capture. That is, if you could give a critique?

Thanks in advance.

I'm definitely no expert on critiquing, I've just watched enough captures to think to myself whether I'd be happy with the result and if the content is watchable in that there aren't distracting artifacts. if a certain artifact is distracting enough, it detracts from the rest if you're picky about such things. For the file size that is compressed down to, it is still quite watchable I'd say, but I think you can agree that in dark scenes that a lot of the pixels get "rounded" to black or very near black. Still is probably a better look than mostly lighter than black though. I'm one of those people that gets distracted by head switching noise at the bottom of captures - if that says anything haha.

DV I think gets a bad rap, but the look is probably closer to how most of us remember VHS, a bit softer, but if viewed on an average CRT, I doubt you'd notice the artifacts/posterization/softness that can come with it. Softness can also be preferable in some cases, but the idea is you can always go from sharper to softer with video filters, but going the other way is usually more problematic, so probably better to have more detail to begin with if you're looking for a sharper result.

Thanks again for the critique. It gives me something more to consider in post editing. Normally I'd cut a little off the sides and bottom to address distracting artifacts, "head switching noise" being one. Just wanted it to be clear, and no question as to what this capture was.

FYI this may explain smc not responding
https://smcelectronics.com/SMCEMAIL.HTM

Perhaps others here have had problems/issues w/smcelectronics.com. And should be helpful to check out the FYI that Dougmc has provided above.

Personally, my experience with https://smcelectronics.com/vcrrep.htm, when I ordered belts, was un-eventful. Meaning, the communication and the order of, and the receiving of, my purchase was carried out with zero drama.

-- merged --

Just an FYI...

The 7800s that were offered up for sale in post #22 are no longer available.

Thank you