JVC SR-W5U Standard VHS Tracking Issue

[Jeremy112]

Hello everyone,

I just bought one of these decks after reading about them for a loooong while. Nice unit!

My problem is when using a standard VHS cassette (commercial ones you purchase with the movie on them at that) will NOT track the video...

... that is, you get the worst possible picture quality unless manually tracking the tape, and even then its unbearable and worse than analog TV broadcast on a blizzardy day.

Now here is the odd thing, if I fast forward or rewind while in play mode, the video is excellent, I can see the movie as clear as you should be able to while fast forwarding or rewinding in play mode.

As soon as it goes back to just playing, the quality goes back in the crapper

I understand this is a super rare deck, and odds of finding support are slim to none. But I have to believe someone out there knows what might be causing this issue.

Please help if theres anyone out there who can Thank you!!

[volksjager]

try giving the heads a good manual cleaning with chamois and alcohol.
it may be out of alignment. these decks are super fragile and dont ship well.
most of the W-VHS specific parts are unobtainium
but many of the transport parts are shared with the just pre-digipure JVC decks - like the HR-S7100U and SR-S365U