On our living room t.v. we have a Panasonic VCR, 4 head, stereo hifi, etc. It’s 4 years old, light-moderate use. It plays tapes beautifully: excellent sound and picture. But lately it’s been munching tapes. When it plays them the picture looks/sounds great, but then “MUNCH”! I ran a head cleaner through it but it’s still doing this. In the last 2 weeks it’s muched 4 tapes. But when it plays them, they look great. Any idea why it’s doing this? I’m not going to spend $$$ to get a 4 year old, $150 vcr repaired, but before I toss it I thought I’d see if there was anything I could do to save it.
Try cleaning it again. Use a head cleaner that uses a liquid solution, and do it at least twice.
If that doesn’t work, something is out of alignment and it needs to be fixed. Get an estimate first… as you said it might make more sense to buy a new one.
Good luck!
Tape-munching is usually caused by something slipping or out of alignment in the mechanism which pulls the tape out of the cassette into the tape path. Could be a slipping belt or roller, could be a mechanism that needs oiling, could even be a stripped gear somewhere. If you know what you’re doing, it’s a pretty simple repair, but a repair shop will charge you as much as a new VCR goes for to fix this.
They sure do. Plus you shouldn’t be using it, in my opinion, because youre gonna mess up those
cassettes.
Its probably a belt or pinch roller perhaps. Neither is worth getting it done in a shop. Just buy a new vcr,
they are like $59 at circuit city for a basic vcr. I wouldn’t get another Panasonic, though, because
I have owned a few of them & they are just not worth it. Hey, you know whats cool? at Circuit City
you can get like a three year guarantee on the whole machine for about $29. If anything happens
to it in three years, then just take it back & they give you a new one (or so the ad in the store said).