I've been following this coversation from the beginning, curios to see what would happen, how it would end. It's been a few days since you last posted, so curious what the outcome was.

In all honesty, you guys are braver than I. :)

I was always too scared to buy one of these because they seemed like buggy money pits, and potentially unfixable. I have enough problems with mainstream decks going on the fritz, that I don't want another one. At least 1 JVC and 1 Panasonic always seems to be screwy here. The JVC 9800 is down right now, which kind of sucks. That one was my unit. We have SR-V10U all over the place as backups.

I wish you the best on this SR-W5 deck.

I can repair some things, but I've always been a user more than anything else.

LS you are quite right.
they are fragile cuckoo clocks with no parts available.
i traded my broken W5U to a forum member for a nice HR-S7500U

i still have my working W7U but am trying to work out a trade for that too.