Speaking of the N965U I got off ebay, in transit to me the guides seemed to work their way loose, not to mention the front being damaged somewhat, so now I am looking for the replacement updated guides for this thing, or a repair shop that's still in business that will fix it.
My other option is to use parts out of this Yamaha VCR I have, where I did sucessfully glue down the guides where they come loose, and mechanically that vcr works but it has electrical problems. Anyways, i might be able to swap guides between that and the NEC, already sucessfully done that with a parts Sony and a Sony SLV-676UC that I fixed over the weekend
Speaking of that Sony, I have 2 of those SLV-676UC units, and they are very nice VCRs IMO. They have some common problems, like the capstan bearing failing and the half load arm getting stuck, I was able to fix all that on one by taking the stronger bearing out of the parts sony and relubing the half load arm. What's nice about these early 1990s Sonys is they usually only have common mechanical problems that are easy for me to fix, almost never any electrical problems, and the big one is that they seem to play tapes from almost any machine, even in EP, and the recordings I make seem to play in almost anything, and they have great sounding HI-Fi audio too!