Hey, remember when I used to write about interesting VCRs and whatnot that I had come across? It’s sure been awhile! The reason being that while I have picked up several really good ones in recent months, I just couldn’t get sufficiently fired up enough to write about them. That changes now, because after a fairly long dry spell, I finally, finally came across a ridiculously cool VCR out in the wild that absolutely needs a place of honor (ha!) on my silly blog. Behold: a Sylvania Hi-Fi VHS VCR, model number VC3645GY01, from 1985! And it only set me back $5 last weekend! Cool winnins!
From the picture above, it may not look that interesting. I mean, sure, it has that classy black and silver, heavy duty 1980s design going for it, and it’s a 4-head, Hi-Fi stereo model, but is that really enough to get me to write about it? Plenty of other VCRs from the time period had the same characteristics, after all. Keep reading chief, you’ll see, the real horsepower of this beast is under the hood, so to speak.
Outside appearances belie the advantages of this deck, because this thing is positively loaded with features. It all comes courtesy of an everlastingly cool fold-down door. Nope, a regular pull-down door just won’t do for the Sylvania; by pressing the appropriately-named “door” button, all the features drop down to your fingertips.
Just look at ’em all! Besides the standard play-stop-rewind-fast-forward-pause-record options, you’ve got the ability to record in all three speeds, and even cooler, the ability to do freakin’ audio dubbing! You can adjust the audio levels, and/or fiddle around with the audio level meter display. I love the old-school tracking control knob, and even though I’ll never actually use it, the (relatively) easy-set clock/timer feature had to have been a blessing back in ’85.
And look at that! Even more features! Sharpness control (which is a feature I absolutely love on a lot of these old VCRs), a regular TV or cable TV swich, you can even select normal or thin tape! Since I never really do any audio dubbing, I’m guessing that option was for that particular feature of the VCR?
Something that’s really cool and which I wasn’t expecting at all is seen in the left picture above: That 1:37 isn’t the tape counter (indeed, this unit uses the old-school, 0000 tape counters, as opposed to the exact hours/minutes/seconds counters of later VCRs). Rather, that seems to indicate how much time is left on the tape. Swanky! That sort of thing was in vogue later on, but I was a surprised to see it used in a 1985 model.
The picture on the right demonstrates the slow-motion feature in action. You know, I’ve got that option on a lot of my VCRs (both VHS and Beta), and while it’s not something I ever really use at all, I still get a kick out of it being included. Go figure.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, it’s even got an LED audio level meter, in an attractive red-and-blue color scheme to boot!
However, there are some sad failins afoot with this deck: it doesn’t quite work correctly. It seems like until it gets “warmed up,” it won’t really run a tape all that well, and when it finally does get warmed up, you get sound (really terrific sound, in fact), but no picture. Maybe the heads are shot, maybe they just need a good cleaning, I don’t know. I’m actually not too upset about this factor, though. The genuine coolness of this VCR was easily worth the $5 I plunked down for it, and besides, odds are it can be repaired in the future, if need be.
(From how I understand it, Sylvania VCRs were always just re-badged Panasonic machines anyway, which I kinda suspected in the first-place, so some parts swapping probably isn’t out of the question, if it came to that.)
And yet more features on the back of the unit! You’ll probably have to click on either pic to enlarge them enough to see, but there’s an audio filter switch, camera remote input, right and left microphone inputs, and what really kinda surprised me, a Pay-TV knob. I’ve got a lot of old VCRs lying around, and while there may very well be a similar knob on one of those as well, I just can’t recall seeing a Pay-TV knob on any of them. And truth be told, I’m really not sure how exactly that would work. I’m guessing to record Pay-Per-View and whatnot? Or maybe used in conjunction with those old ‘special channel’ boxes? I have no idea.
And that’s all in addition to the necessary stereo RCA jack inputs and outputs.
See, model number VC3645GY01, manufactured in late-1985. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.
I can’t even begin to guess how much this model cost back in 1985, and internet searches really aren’t revealing a whole lot of info about it or even any pictures of it, but this sure looks like it was a pretty high-end model back in the day, and high-end models weren’t exactly cheap at the time. It’s funny, a VCR that was undoubtedly several hundred dollars (at least!) back in the 1980s only cost me $5 last week, but hey, that’s the nature of electronics; it doesn’t take long for them to become obsolete. Well, obsolete to the general public, anyway. Me? I get fired up finding things like this just as much as I probably would have had I found it new in the stores back in ’85!
It’s not quite the best VCR I’ve found while out thrifting, but it’s up there, even if it’s not working correctly at the moment. No matter, because I was thrilled to come across this unit. Indeed, I wish I had more finds like it! It’s a welcome addition to my ever-growing mountain of ancient VCRs.
THE NORTHEAST OHIO VIDEO HUNTER 