Show Us Your Vintage Rotating Heads
 

Here is my 1981 Sony SL-2500 Betamax. 20 pounds 12 ounces, all metal construction. I currently use it for archiving. I love these old machines. Show us what you got.

Here's mine
 

This is the FIRST VCR manufactured in Brazil ( 1983 ), it is the Philco model PVC 1000.

Here's my RCA SelectaVision VCT 400 manufactured July 26, 1978. It weighs in at just over 38 lbs.


[IMG]http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/u...ofDSC_0924.jpg[/IMG]



This unit has seen a LOT of use over the years (as you can see by all of the wear and tear), but was finally retired about 5 years ago when it developed a motor speed problem.

It served me well over the years.

Bob

Very nice!!!:thmbsp:

Two fun reel-to-reel monochrome oldies:

1972 Sony AV3400, 1/2" tape, 5" reels... picture1
1966 Ampex VR660, 2" tape 12.5" reels... picture2

jr

A-m-a-z-i-n-g!!!
 

Were those intended for home use???

"Were those intended for home use???"

No, I don't think that they were intended for home use, although some may have ended up in homes.

The Sony "portapack" was popular with sports coaches, golf swing experts, schools, industry and perhaps a few home movies were made with these machines.

The Ampex was semi portable... about 95 lbs, but with a handle on both ends, likely was used by some tv stations to record remote events.

I remember reading once that Hugh Hefner had a 2" Tape, quad head color Ampex at his home, in days before VHS and Beta. :yes:

jr

My Sony U-Matics. Sony VO-9800 (top) and BVU-950 in action.

Those are some realy coool video recorders
 

Those are some realy cooool video recorders:banana:
I got a circa 1972 Panasonic U-Matic video recorder for home use with the original wired remote-huge and yes, it's got both VHF-ch 2-13 and UHF-ch 12-69 tuners. Also got 4 Sony SL-7200 Betamaxes from 1976 w/original K-60 Betamax tapes as well:-) 2-inch video tape is really cool:-)

LabGuy says that a simplified model of the Ampex 660 *was* intended for home use...

http://www.labguysworld.com/Ampex_VR-1500.htm

jr

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...H5100QWVCR.jpg

My Quasar VH5100. Still kickin' after all these years. I run it from time to time to keep the belts loose.

But the George Foreman grill in the background gets LOTS more use. So does the RCA 8-X-541 radio.

Brian

In '72 shouldn't that UHF tuner go to 83? I thought it was early 90's that the UHF band was cut to 69. I could be wrong...

I've gotten hold of from a guy in Queensland Australia, a couple of early 70s home movies recorded on an early 70s Sony EIAJ standard reel-reel portapack VTR. The recordings date from 1971 to about 1973 and were done in New Zealand when he lived there, the tapes transferred successfully and the pictures were mostly in great quality. A good mix of footage of family videos and segments of New Zealand TV show footage recorded via the vidicon camera pointed to the TV screen, one of the recordings was some footage of the Bee Gees In Concert circa 1971 which I've uploaded to YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO2AxOF20mw . So yep some people did own portapacks back then for domestic use of making home movies.

Here are some of my old video recorders I've collected over the past 7 years:

Philips N1512 VCR SP 1976
Philips N1700 VCR LP 1978
Grundig SVR-4004 1979
VCR tapes 1970s
Sony CV-2100CE 1967
National NV-3020E VTR 1973/74 (recently gave it back to the former owner as I now have a Sony AV-3620CE VTR to transfer reel-reel videos)

Nice decks!! Nice youtube video!!:thmbsp:

At one time, I had a VTR/VCR that was a transition between R-R and cassette machines. As I recall it was a National. The tape was contained in a small cassette with only ONE reel inside... when it was loaded the machine would thread itself around the heads and to take up reel (5"?)contained under the top cover of the deck. It was color. Do any of yours load that way?

jr

I found a picture of it, Lab guy has everything!

http://www.labguysworld.com/Panasonic_NV-5110.htm

It was more fun to watch the thing thread itself than the ONE cassette that I had.

Ahh those National/Panasonic cartridge machines. I personally don't have any of those decks but I do have some cassettes for this machine, there was one National NV-5120A VCR on Ebay here in Australia last year but I unfortunately missed the auction. Anyhow I've learned from someone that because these cassettes are EIAJ format just like a standard EIAJ open reels, you can take the reels out and play them on a colour EIAJ standard reel-reel VTR. Very interesting format indeed too. I would love to one day own an operational National cartridge machine like this.

Here ya go.. AMPEX at Home!

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1255234753

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1255234753

I'm looking for Ampico-kid's VCR. I used to record cartoons on it when I was 5!
I found a Panasonic PV-1100 on the curb a couple weeks ago. After meticulous cleaning, it seems to work pretty well without any rubber part replacement.

Wow, that Ampex is cool. I tried to find more info on it but could not. Wonder how many they made?

Excellent collection!

My compliments on the VR660, a rare one. Is yours in working condition?

David

I have a Philips N1500, said to be the worlds first home VCR as we know them today; it could be connected to any TV, it was easy to operate and it had a recording timer. It's driven by two brushless AC motors - the same type as used in record players. On each of the drive shafts there is a metal disc with a coil which is used to slow it down to the right speed. This is the same kind of electromagnetic brake system used on some trucks and other heavy vehicles. My N1500 is only partially working, missing the wire from the threading system and only displaying an unsharp B&W picture. I also have a N1502 in great condition and i also had a completely worn out N1700 which i gave away to another collector.

Then there's the VR2020; The Video Compact Cassette, also known as Video 2000. This was supposed to compete with Beta and VHS, but had some technical difficulties in its early days. The players still looks futuristic: LED-displays, a lot of buttons, brushed aluminium, brushless (and virtually noiseless) direct drive DC motors etc. By the time they got things sorted out, it was too late, and the format quickly died out. V2000 never got official stereo specs, and as far as i know were never made in NTSC version. I am not too impressed with the picture quality, but the system had other advantages. For instance, up to 16 hours recording time in SLP-mode, noise free still and picture search and incredibly well-built machines. Unusual to the format is the tapes that can be turned over and used on both sides. The cassette looks like a over sized audio cassette, and despite the "Video Compact Cassette"-name, these cassettes were a little bit bigger than VHS.

I may be way off base on this but I think he had one in his b727 (or was it a dc-9 he had?) too.

I remember seeing some Ampex model offered in some 60's radioshack catalog.

Going back to an earlier post regarding the Ampex 660 2" VTR, these machines were not entended for home use. I ran several Ampex 660B 2" VTRs back in 1969 when I was in college. We used them in our broadcast center at college. They were intended for ETV use and for closed circuit television. Even though they produced an excellent B&W picture, they did not meet broadcast quality standards for broadcast OTA use.

G'day all. On this page http://1970scountdown.atspace.com/vintagevideo.html of my site http://1970scountdown.atspace.com/ is pretty much all of my vintage video gear I've had over the past 8 years of collecting.

vintage VCRs.. so many.
 

heres a few that i have that ive gotten around to photographing.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/...bf7c9a78_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3014/...e3b860d9_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3237/...e3265a15_b.jpg
in fact, it would probably be better to just look at the flickr set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2225077...7606472117657/

Very cool, toledogeek! You actually have tapes for your Great Time Machine, I see.

i do, nothing too interesting im afraid, most of a jfk documentary, and half of gone with the wind, and the rest are blank.

while not "rotating heads" i finally got one of my 2 BNIB magnavox VH-8005 working. word to anyone attempting to restore one, do not assume it can be fixed by adjusting pots/recapping. the two moving mirrors get frozen in place by age and mis-aligned by transport. so if anyone has one of these out there, half-working, and it tracks loudly, this is likely your issue. its not in the service manual, or sams. unfortunately, i ruined one player before realizing this.

performance is, well, as advertised. it works ok on modern, defect free CAV discs, adequately on CLV, and poorly on anything USA discovision. which from what ive read, is all i can really expect out of this machine.

the way that these machines were made, i expect many more problems. my working one has a build date of september 1982, one of the last made, but has modules from as early as february 1979. the other machine, from 1981, is similar. this hodgepodge of modules from different factories and times, and the plug-in-module nature of the machine, makes it destined for unreliability.

pics to come soon, keep watching the flickr. this was an over 1-year on again-off again project. but quite the learning experience, i know more about laserdisc now then i'd ever thought i'd know.

That is also interesting news about the Magnavision players, and thank you for the repair tips. I have a VH8000 in its original box, and I would like to get it working some day. (I don't remember what it did when I tried it after I bought it a few years ago, I'm not sure if it even started spinning the disc.)

I worked for a store in Illinois when the players and discs were first introduced there in October 1980, right about the time the news of all the problems was spreading. Our Magnavox distributor gave us the full original Discovision catalog of 200+ movies, but when we went to place an order, the actual list available was about 25 titles, and a couple of weeks later it was about 11, I think. This was all still before any Extended Play (CLV) discs were manufactured, other than the original three titles that were already long gone by then.

Hey do you guys know of anyone who will take a look at my Magnavision?

I have one and it's not working (spins up and the functions seem to work, just can't get pic and sound on monitor).

I am not good at fixing things...and these look like they would be very complicated to work on...considering I have no knowledge of LD players..and I don't have any tools to do so.

Bayview Electronics will not look at these. Any help? I'm desperate!

I used to work on those things. Had to be set up on a service jig to run it level and swing out the boards from underneath to get to the test points and adjustments. Without the jig and an assortment of modules and a rebuilt known good laser optical assembly sitting around just in case, it would be a real challange if not impossible for someone to work on one of those old beasts today. Up until this April my old shop still had all that stuff in stock, and a couple of the 8000 players back in the warehouse. All gone now!

Brockolye-

I do not know of any place that works on the early Laser Disc players, and my own is a future project.

Ed-

I never even thought to ask you about any service items for the Magnavox players; now I wish I had. I did manage to get one of the Sams Photofact manuals for it (volume VDP-1, not even in their index anymore). Thank you for the tip about repairing the players.

Had all that stuff , modules, jigs, service and training manuals, going back to day 1 of those players.

I keep thinking of other manuals I wish I had grabbed..

Poor condition compared to my Aug 28th 1978 unit. :P


My is in excellent to mint cosmetic condition

Heads have Corrosion, :tears:
it's a parts or display unit at this point
bought it for $15

I think it has a bad belt on it as well.



My prized possession is a SONY RDR-VX560
DVD-RW/VHS recored combo 19micron (Quasi S-VHS Playback as well)
the reason is it has HDMI that can be used in VHS mode :drool:

Getting the pure digital signal from the tape nets way better Picture Quality and Audio Quality. plus the dvd burns look amazing. No juddering what so ever. :yes:


http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3294/dscn1845fu.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us


more VCR's in my collection
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/7821/dscn1847y.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3402/dscn1848i.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

:scratch2: Did not know Sony sold a S-VHS pb-capable combo like that. That would be handy to have. All I recorded was S-VHS from about 1988 on so lots of the stuff I have is S-VHS.

I see a Go Video (Sensory Science) dual deck there in the stack. Used to see a fair share of those. At some point in time they had to enable copyguard in their newer machines, so that made all the old ones much more desirable to keep running.

I sure it has that hidden feature.

even the basic Sony "player" combo has it ,I could try it if I can find a SVHS tape to test it out I do not have any on hand


I could burn a SVHS ET then try and play it on it.

Yep was looking at a VX515 on the local CL and it has "SQPB".

SQPB: The VCR will play tapes recorded in VHS or S-VHS formats. The unit has SQPB (S-VHS Quasi Playback)

I have a Toshiba with the same features as that Sony combo. I'm archiving some anime on it as I type this. It was a thrift store find and is a tad beat up that combined with the dirt inside make me prefer using my JVC S-VHS-ET units for all tape based functions. That Toshiba is the only good used DVD recorder that I've found yet, and has become the heart of my entertainment/archiving scheme.

You have quite an impressive collection of S-VHS units BTW.

Pretty sure that Phillips VRA-999 is a JVC clone, without the nice JVC features like the Digipure noise reduction/TBC. Its amazing how stripped down the JVC HR-S2xxx/3xxx models are. No front S-Video input? How lame.