Sony SL-HF450 Beta VCR
 

I picked this up at a thrift store for $4 and it's supposed to work; but, I'll have to find a tape to test it. This is the first beta machine that I've seen in ages and it looks to be well made. For $4, I'm not out much even if it does not work.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...ut/sony010.jpg

Check the local thrift stores good for Beta tapes; I lucked out that the junk shop in my area had a boxful of them, and many of them didn't even have the labels removed from the sheets! If no luck, a tech man's best friend, eBay, will produce excellent results. Good luck!

If it don't work and you don't feel like trying to fix it I'll triple your money for it.

I have a similar model, but mine is dead.. I still haven't bothered to fix it yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSBMHBs0-GQ

Sony Broadcast Betacam oxide tapes are the same. Not BetacamSP. Different animal. Not sure of the L-xxx conversion to real recording time but they are out there and probably new.

Betacam (non-SP) tapes should run one hour at BII speed for every ten minutes marked in Betacam time. That is, a Betacam "30-minute" tape would be the equivalent of an L-750.

I have one of these awesome Betamax machines.

I am hoping that the heads are just dirty. The unit played a tape but only in black and white. Then color popped in for a few and returned to b/w.

I grabbed a couple of different cassettes from my collection, one a purchased pre-recorded copy of Raiders and a tape I had made myself.

Audio plays great, but no video at all. Additionally, I don't seem to get any snow from the tuner. I am hoping that a circuit hasn't cooked.

Any thoughts?

A nice looking BETA player my friend,I hope you have alot of success!!

I love thrift shops!!!!!! -- I havent found any beta stuff though!

The other day I found a VHS-C to VHS adapter (You put the VHS-C cartridge in it and it will play on a reg VCR -- IT WOULD BE NICE IF IT WAS A BETA-REG VHS adapter)


Good luck RCAkid getting things going :)

Upon further troubleshooting, it would seem we have a circuit issue somewhere. After a day or two of being powered down, I fired it back up, ran the head cleaner cassette and was rewarded with a picture. I also had snow from the tuner.

I popped in a cassette and it played a perfect picture, for about two minutes and then went back to a black screen and no snow from the tuner.

I did check around the boards for a broken solder connection but nothing apparent. Any ideas on where I should be looking in this beastie?

Power supply electrolytic capacitor(s) is the "easy" answer. To find any that are bad, though, you need an ESR meter.

Or just look for some capacitors that look like they're bulging on top or on the bottom, usually a bad capacitor will physically show that its bad by showing a bulge in it, whether it be at the top or the bottom, that's been my experience anyways with bad electrolytics in power supplies on these old Electronics.