Luka's Broadcast Museum

I had been looking for this JVC S-VHS VTR for a long time. They're very rare because very few people used S-VHS in a professional environment (the S-VHS format wasn't very reliable). On top of that, the deck is very large and heavy, so most people don't want to ship it. I managed to find this one at an eBay auction for €200; the seller couldn't sell it because he hadn't enabled the shipping option, so it wasn't showing up in listing searches. I managed to negotiate the price down a bit and we agreed that he would ship it to me by post.

When the VTR arrived, there were power supply problems. At first it would only power on for half a minute (which is too long), and when I inserted my first test tape it shut off and wouldn't power on again, and the tape got stuck inside. It turned out the power supply board had cracked and severed the contacts. After repairing the power supply, the VTR worked perfectly.

Unfortunately I didn't get the optional TBC boards and timecode boards. It came in the base configuration. The unit works but has ghosting and oversharpening issues, so it's not reliable for digitizing. In my opinion, the best thing about this VCR is that it allows forward and reverse shuttle speeds up to 32 times with a visible picture. That lets me quickly preview content on S-VHS and VHS tapes.
As far as I know, this is the only professional S-VHS VCR that supports compact (S-VHS-C and VHS-C) cassettes without an adapter.

Personally, this is my favorite S-VHS/VHS VCR series ever made. I love their professional look and Betacam-style VTR design.