[Captainclock]

Originally Posted by Damnation

The half-load arm is a simple fix, but that plastic load gear can be a pain to replace (some are buried within under IC boards). If I can test a Sony deck before buying, I always use a flashlight (penlight, cellphone light) to make sure both tape guide arms wrap the tape around the drum during playback.

Disconnected from a TV, a Sony with a broken load gear will appear to function properly. Playback, RW, FF all "appear" to be okay. You must look inside while a cassette is playing, best seen with a flashlight, to see if the left guide is functioning correctly. If broken, the tape will only half load, the right guide will still work correctly. Another giveaway of a broken gear when disconnected to a TV is the front time display not working. It'll either stay at 00:00 or working intermittently. When connected to a TV, a broken gear Sony will display a picture that totally fails to track properly, just a big scrambled mess, but you will likely still hear perfect audio.

That's the thing when I first bought this VCR from Goodwill about a year and a half ago it worked perfectly it even worked perfectly fine the last time it was used about 2 months ago but when I went to use the VCR about a month ago was when it started acting up, and was when the gear broke.