[Outland]

I will be working on a Panasonic (PV-4559) VCR soon with a bad rotary switch. I’m going to clean the switch and change the belt. While I’m in there, I’d like to completely overhaul the mech.

What would this entail? If I had to guess, I would say clean the tape path and replace the rubber parts.

The rubber parts would include the idler tire and pinch roller. At one point, the pinch roller was available from studio sound electronics, but it's discontinued now.

I found a source for the pinch roller, but the part was produced in 1996. Is a NOS rubber part as good as a new part, or will it be deteriorated (hardened) as one in a VCR? In that case, I may be better off pulling a pinch roller from a newer clean VCR.