AG-1980 repair service in/near NYC?

[malfc]

I received my first AG1980 around March/April in pristine condition from one of the best sellers. Since then, I've had very few issues that I wasn't able to fix through searching digitalfaq.

More recently I came upon a sudden issue where all tapes show an entirely snowy picture with excellent sounding audio. Everything looked great a few weeks ago. I opened the VCR for the first time ever, found the automatic head cleaner and very gently cleaned off the dust that had collected, but this didn't improve the picture quality at all. I refrained from touching the heads. At this point, I'm guessing I have to send it out to be serviced.

My original plan was to save up for a 2nd AG1980 to fall back on, figuring I had a minimum of 12 months before the 1st AG1980 inevitably requires maintenance. But it only took mine 8 months. I probably only transferred about 40-45 tapes since April, which is a pretty low number considering the immense cost of the deck.

I live in New York City and one would think at least one person or one store in a city of 8 million might have enough knowledge of AG-1980s to help with this, in case anyone here is familiar with anyone in the area so that I can avoid the burden of packaging and shipping.

I should note, I'm positive that this is not an instance where a full $800 refurb is necessary.

[lordsmurf]

I wonder if the heads have gotten clogged from a tape that micro-shed oxide. Been there myself.

I would suggest a gentle proper cleaning. Perhaps due to the expense, and known-quality condition of this already-refurb'd deck, you should wait on me to guide you through this process, since you've never done it before (?).

Let's prep:
- Do you have plain new copy/print paper? (The cheap 20 lb works best, no additives.)
- Do you have 90% or better isopropyl alcohol? Rubbing alcohol, sold at drugs stores, Walmart, dollar stores.

[aramkolt]

Hard to say without seeing the unit, but a full refurb (at least the way I do it) I think should last about a decade of regular use before the next maintenance, not 8 months since all components that are likely to fail are replaced in advance of them failing and they were generally pretty issue-free when they were new for at least a decade, but I also can't speak to what other refurbishers actually do. Deter to my knowledge only changes the SMT caps on the TBC card and 6 caps on the front LCD panel based on the single unit I re-repaired that wasn't loading a VHS-C adapted tapes. I've seen some stories about Tgrantphoto about changing individual caps as opposed to blanket recaps of certain boards, but they don't really elaborate on their site as I suppose it is a trade secret haha. I'd be even more curious to inspect yours if it was refurbished by someone other than Deter to get a better idea what these other refurbishing services are actually doing.

For reference, I fully recap:

The TBC card (including BOTH the surface mount the through-hole caps)
The front two boards
Head amp
Power supply (including the main filter cap)

....and a few other select caps that I've seen go bad on some of the other boards.

I will say I've yet to find an AG1980 in the wild that had worn out heads after having refurbished 20+ of them, so I would have to doubt yours is that and that also shouldn't really have happened while sitting unused. They must have used relatively durable materials for the heads themselves compared to some other makes/models. It's theoretically possible that a head sheared off on a particularly bad/mangled/sticky tape, but that's luckily relatively unlikely.

By the description, it does sound like a dirty head, but if you've done the paper and alcohol method of cleaning already, there's really nothing that shouldn't clear for VHS. Hi8/Digital8 and betacam SP and later tapes used metal particle tapes that clogs require more of a mechanical abrasive with dry cleaning tapes, but regular alcohol and paper should clear any type of VHS/SVHS/Betamax clog. Best practice is to never turn drum clockwise when cleaning it with the paper/alcohol method as it never spins in that direction during operation. Only turn it counterclockwise.

I'll PM you to see if you want me to take a look at yours if the head cleaning doesn't fix it. If I can't get it working, I'd just charge the cost of return shipping since I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to and I have parts AG1980's to pull from if necessary. I also have complete fully refurbished AG1980's if you're looking to pick up a reliable spare machine at $1200 shipped within the USA.

[malfc]

Hi, following up from quite a while ago...

I had some help from a really nice person who did a pretty great job cleaning and replacing a few caps around Jan/Feb 2025. After the deck was returned, I transferred about 30-35 tapes between March and June, and they all look great. My preferred process involves capturing lots of tapes all at once over the course of a few days or a week. And then focusing on individual edits/encodes/conversions in the weeks that follow, completing about one file per day.

After putting it aside for the summer, I went to capture a few more tapes in the fall. Playback of SLP tapes suddenly shows lots of horizontal flickers. I went through the standard troubleshooting - I attempted to clean the heads but I didn't actually notice any dirt or black marks on the computer paper, and the horizontal lines persisted, no worse than earlier. Tried out different cables, several different tapes with same results. SP tapes look ok - not as "perfect" as they did before, but passable for a couple family video transfers - no one complained. But for tapes I hope to share more widely, I'd rather fix the issue before proceeding.

Asking again in case the status has changed, if anyone near NYC has knowledge of simple AG-1980 maintanence. It seems like a very simple fix to me considering what a few people on and off this thread have mentioned. And might be a waste of effort and money to ship out the deck for a simpler issue. It's also very possible that I just don't know how to clean the heads the right way. (I broke a different VCR attempting a clean a couple years ago and I'm very nervous about doing the same thing to this expensive deck.)

Thanks!