Noise in Sony Hi8 EVO-9850 Playback

[Jim Norman]

I've started capturing about 100 hours of Hi8 video and am encountering problems with the playback deck I wish to use. I have two Hi8 decks. The first is a Sony EVO-9850 which is a high end deck with lots of adjustments available. This is the deck I would prefer to use because of the availability of these adjustments. The problem I am encountering is that there are occasional dropouts as exhibited by white streaks shown in the attached screen capture. When I play back the same tape on a Sony EV-S5000 deck, the noise isn't there. I have cleaned the heads on the EVO9850 several times, but it hasn't helped. Does anyone have any suggestions or is there a better forum to post this question on. I realize that this is old technology.

Thanks.