I worked at a Sony store before the launch of the F1, the previous SL3000, I think it was called was a clunky monster of a ‘portable’ in comparison to the futuristic F1 well over £1000 at launch for a TT1/F1 combo. We all thought it was the mutts mutts!. But then I had started back in the days of the SL8000, and the ‘improved’ SL8080, so Beta had come a long way...... would love an F1 now, so compliment my SL-C7, and the SL-1000 that I still have.
I had an SL3000 in not long ago, unfortunately just before I started doing RU-vid, and got it working quite well. It was of course a huge, heavy and primitive thing compared to the F1, but picture quality was surprisingly good. You're doing well to keep a C7 going, it wasn't Sony's most reliable of machines.
One thing I'd like to note, if the camera input connector doesn't work, there is a fuse that actually protects the 12V supply to the camera. I blew this fuse on my SL-2000 and just want to point that out if anyone has issues using a Sony camera with this recorder. Pretty neat how they designed a fuse there to protect that. Also, I managed to set the clock on my TT-2000 without the manual, lol. Not sure if the TT-F1E is different though I have the NTSC model. Overall, the SL-2000/SL-F1 is a solid Betamax VCR. Very easy to open up and clean, but sadly it doesn't do Beta Hi-Fi, so it's not the best for archiving. I wish they would have made a portable that did,
I've found this model very hard to work on, because the flexi cables between the boards can break up when you dismantle it. If only the top over the deck had been removable.
They were threatening to "fix" a DVCPRO deck. I still quite like Sanyo machines, they are very well built. See my RU-vid video about those if you have not already.
I have one SLF1 which came in with low head hours,its still perfect playback. Hardwired it for av out to save time on pcb underneath and from memory removing the 2 screws at back ,you can lever top cover off easily to get to head assembly. Its great also for feeding 405 line video into it for testing purposes. Nice presentation, thanks.
I'm wondering if there might be a plug which would fit the rear connector to make it easier to do A/V in/out on these. The other way might be to use the camera connector.
Hello. Do You have an idea, where I can obtain a 10 bit camera socket adapter for panasonic video cameras of the early 80s? What is the exact name of the 10 bit socket? Thank You.
Two nice neat units, and they do seem quite forgiving on the tracking :-D From my experence, if the heads were worn or deck alignment was wrong the tracking would not be so relaxed. Also the head pre amps r.f output would look wrong. Some machines seem to be almost impossible to dial in the settings perfect. Owners need a good slap at times for messing with the deck settings.
Hi and hope all is well and thanks for the review but, check the rewind..this was the major problem in the old days the drum lost it's milling and became too polished and the rewind used to slap and sound dreadful...i have loads like this..xxxx
Just picked up a tuner/timer and two recorders on the Japanese auctions to throw in with my SuperBeta HiFi order. Hopefully they work as well as these two, I'd like to stop using my massive Sears-rebadged Toshiba recorder when I record Beta portably.
I would love a SuperBeta HiFi deck. Actually two would be nice, a PAL and an NTSC. I have a lot of Pro-X tapes here, which I think are required for SuperBeta operation.
The one major and strategic failure of the SL-F1 is as a standalone unit first you need the tuner or charger as a power source. TV connection output well you can use the 75 ohm but if you wanted to use an rca output you needed the Sony VMC-330 26 pin to rca cord adapter which nowadays are almost non existent. OK it might have been miniaturised for portability but unless you got those must have extras the sl-f1 is very useless. Very unfortunate that Sony wasn't forward thinking in much more accessible external connections.
Hello my friend 😊 good job 👍 I am absolutly not a very gifted person in repairing vcr's 😅😅 But I am waiting right now for a thomson portable vcr . And next month I will buy a betamax vcr (portable) A friend of mine told me he had absolutely no problems with those vcr's ... Are they reliable ? And , do you know anything bout thomson vcr's ? Are they good ? Greetings from Paris 🍻 take care of yourself and thank you 🙏😊
Hi, I have an identical one with his 4000p camera and I would like to ask you for a advice In playback it works perfectly but when I record with the camera the video then played it is in black and white very noisy image with colored square spots Could you please give me some advice?
Firstly, does the image look OK if you monitor during recording, but then look bad from tape? Or is it bad even during monitoring? That helps to point towards a camera fault or a recorder fault. If it's the recording which is bad, then the fault could well be due to capacitor failure in the recorder, which may be quite time consuming to locate and repair.
DEAR SIR MY POWER UNIT UNIT TIMER WILL NOT POWER UP MY F1. CAN YOU PLEASE SUGGEST ANY IDEAS AS I HAVE TWO OF THESE MACHINES WITH NO WAY OF POWERING THEM UP THANKS DAVE DOE
The simplest solution is to pick up another power supply. Since the F1 portable recorders are relatively less reliable than the power supplies, there are often power supplies available. It shouldn't be too hard to find one. The tuner/timers are less commonly available but you probably would not need one of those today.
Cleaning the audio/control head on the SL-F1 is not that straightforward, it incorporates a brass coloured shim in its construction (just above the audio part of the head) which tarnishes over time. I used to use a tiny piece of Duraglit wadding wrapped around the end of a cotton bud to clean the shims and then check under a microscope. As far as I can remember the F1 is the only Sony Betamax that uses this brass coloured shim in the audio/control head constuction. It was a very common cause of poor audio HF response and alcohol just won't shift the tarnish. Love your videos by the way.
Any Beta machine will work with it, but the best two are the SL-F1 and the SL-C9, since both have these have the ability to switch off the DOC (Dropout Compensator), since disabling this improves the error correction within the F1 decoder. You could however modify any Beta machine to have a DOC switch, but reference to the service manual.
@@video99couk Thx. I borrowed an SL 20 sony but it won't work with it, no PCM switch. These are hard to find. I have 2 SL 2000 systems but both are not working. :)
@@leonardgoulet5864 The SL-C20 should work just fine, the PCM switch is not a requirement. It only helps with error correction. So there must have been something else wrong.
i wonder now many are the same sub's each week that watch your video's there's some burn out over time there's one man who get's gear from car boot sales that doe's video's i just put a new power transformer hell of a job i wished i video it akai mg14d the RS transformer are very hard to get into i put on new coils and taps 6 coils to move to the new transformer the 240v power coll was ok i pulled the 6v coil of 150va transformer ' some fool pluged the deck in to 240v the deck was 110v i plugged it into 110v transfromer when i got it to check in it was work 100% tested it was left for a long time i the time the coil was going bad i tested the parts i could test with my dc power unit i am very lucky the parts are still working i is a 125 model i say under the fuses and on the back keep doing the video' bob
That's quite easy to look up. The audience for this video is 69% from subscribers, which is slightly higher than my channel average. I got an NTSC Beta video a while back which some fool had plugged into 240V, but fortunately Sanyo had done a great job of designing the power supply, it only blew a fuse.
