Never had too much to do with Hitachi VHS machines but the M230 does look like a solid machine from a time when Hitachi still produced decent kit and by what you're saying, it was very good so i may well try and find one to feature on the channel. Thank you so much for sharing.
What a lovely ingot! I like these machines. They might be simple and crude and not have the most perfect sound and picture quality but they are the true workhorses.
Totally agree - I loved working on these machines when they weren't butchered by previous 'technicians' back in the day. Saw some very interesting bodges done but this machine is proving just how good they were and a notch up from the 3V00/16 etc machines. More to come on this one too :-)
Excellent! Thanks for sharing! A good trip down memory lane for me. I recall repairing the 3V29's and 3V30's when they were new and under warranty, and also for many years after that. I also recall the ITT, SABA, Nordmende, Telefunken etc branded versions of these HR7200 & HR7300's also.
@@MrBetaByte Yes indeed, as they got older. While under warranty, I recall some having some very interesting one-off electronic faults too. Some had faulty diodes in random places. The small brown-ish / orange-ish glass type diodes, where the glass package had a hair-line crack in them. They would sometimes fall in half when de-soldered from the board. The very first 3V29 I looked at had a faulty diode like that, the customer had only owned it for a week or two 😀
Apparently the stereo version was excusive to rental companies in the UK, so you'll mainly find them as Baird, Multibroadcast, DER etc. as well as the original JVC, but no Ferguson Videostar. I remember repairing a lot of these back in the 90's and the main issues were either the sensor lamp or the loading motor belt which would slip preventing the machine from going into play. So a full service kit would normally get these back into full working order. I imagine now another 30 years later more age related faults are going to be creeping in. When my parents stopped renting and decided to buy a VHS in 1983 they got an ITT Telerecorder 3913, which is another clone of the 3V29/HR7200. One of the biggest differences between the 3V29 and 3V30 is the clock/timer system, the 3V29 and it's clones only have a basic 1 event timer. A 3V30 even got a starring role in an episode of Terry & June in the early 80's where it got dropped on the floor. It was clearly a 3V30 however they were pretending it had an infra-red remote control which looked like the chunky one that came with the slightly earlier 3V23 front loader.
It is very interesting that the stereo version wasn't available as a Ferguson variant but is ort of makes sense as it doesn't fit in with their offerings at the time. Thank you so much for this comment - it's really brought a lot back from back in the day when I was working on so many of these machines and I had totally forgotten about the Terry and June episode featuring this machine. I saw a couple of the ITT variant with it's odd vertical channel buttons and rather smart (I thought) appearance. I really should have mentioned the loading belt as they did tend to wear out before the rest of the belts did especially if an after market belt kit had been fitted as that belt invariably wore out a lot quicker than the rest! My deck has some randomly sourced loading belt that is too tight but thinner so it laces reliably but even slower than it should and that capstan motor needs to be swapped out but I'm waiting for a new old stock one to do this machine justice! Thanks again for waking my brain cells.
We have a top loading VCR in the garage that looks exactly the same as this one only it's missing a brand label but it originally belonged to my paternal Grandmother in the early 1980s until around 2000 when she begged my Dad to take it otherwise it was going in the bin. It was not a bad machine and it still worked, I had it in my room with a Philips G11 series TV which was our main living room TV until 1998. But in August 2001 my parents bought me an LG televideo combi because the Philips G11 was a bit too big for my room and they thought a combined TV/VCR would be more space saving. We only really keep this top loading VCR as a collector's item rather than for use. We also have a JVC HR-2200 in the loft which was my parent's very first VCR but that one was a bit unreliable.
That's really interesting and has given me a real blast from the past! I remember the Philips G11 well. The HR-2200 - wasn't that a portable unit with a separate tuner section?
hi my mate dad had the stereo ferguson he used it alot in the end the wear killed it brother had a ex hire one £100 they were all ways played up all the time i had betamax c7 some time love the beta formats right up to beta digi
That's really cool. A lot of the problem with the earlier VHS machines was poor servicing with belts/ idlers other rubbers missed mainly because they tended to be real tanks that just kept going but I do have to say I totally agree with you with Beta kit - just so much more refined and fun to use.
Thanks for this - I do use rubber renew very rarely - it's really a 'get out of jail' if you really can't find replacement rubber but it's a temporary fix. I do now almost have all of the rubber components to get this machine up and running so video to follow shortly. Ultimately I want to give the longest possible life to these machines I can and rubber renew is only a relatively short-term fix.
