Would an electronically dead USA machine be a suitable "parts mule" for a UK machine as far as the video head drum is concerned? NTSC v PAL make a difference to drum or heads physical dimensions or head posistioning etc ? Required to retrieve sound from tape archives when the PCM , 6 channel audio option ,was used instead of for video use
In this case I would just give it a shot.
When I saw the noise bands produced playing a tape that had video but was o verrecorded with audio on maybe tracks 3 and 4, it looked digital. You woul d think it some sort of frequency modulation or something but I doubt it af ter seeing that. If it is FM, there are only two frequencies involved.
America could be a good source for that part because it is a throwaway soci ety. People are already forgetting what recording tape even is (was). Phone s take better video than camcorders usually did, with certain exceptions ma ybe.
You may find that the thing works perfectly. The price should be right in t he US, there might even be someone giving one away on Craigslist or somethi ng. The problem is shipping. It would be alot better to have someone who kn ows what they're doing pull the drum, pack it properly and ship it to save on that. It could just about go mail. The whole unit on the other hand woul d take a box and all that shit.
I imagine with the 1500 vs 1800 RPM disk speed, the audio tapes across the pond would be as incompatible as the video tapes.
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I don't know if this is true for consumer machines but analog broadcast mac hines use wider heads for PAL to make up for poorer carrier SN ratios from slower drum speeds.
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It is unlikely they have different azimuths or even track widths. A slightl y different track width would optimize between the two systems but they pro bably didn't due to cost. (probably) Even if they did it should still work well enough for what you need.
If the linear tape speed is the same and the RPMs are lower, I would say th at if anything the UK tracks are wider, which should not be a problem excep t it might have trouble picking up the ATF signals. I still doubt it becaus e IIRC the ATF signals are a lower frequency than the actual carriers.
These things have to have some bandwidth to record color under, and both sy stems do that. Stick one in and try it.
You got in edgewise, that last post was an addon. Anyway, there is also ROOM for wider tracks which will improve the quality. The question is whether they bothered in a consumer machine. They don't pinch pennies as much on commercial equipment.
Unfortunately the desoldering part of drum removal is more awkward than any of the video heads I've removed over the years, so probably the whole machine shipped over
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