I had one of these, a Mitsubishi U50, I believe. The head alignment issues are real. Those machines require care and feeding, as pretty much all great analog gear does.

But, if you did that work?

Oh man! Ordinary people could get access to fantastic recording capabilities for a song! I paid a few hundred for mine, and used the crap out of it.

It would record near flat 20 to over 20Khz! Noise was -80Db and better, depending. And it was so good on the lower end that record warps would be reproduced. If you've ever seen this, it's a movement of the bass driver speakers, in and out, as the signal gets biased + or - due to the lift and fall of the needle and cartridge as it moves over the warp, or hump in the vinyl. To see them, you need a very good amp, one that doesn't roll off the very low end.

I had a couple records with this issue and would record them to cassette, which basically filtered this out. The Hi-Fi VHS reproduced it perfectly! (I did not expect that) The only other thing I know would do that is a higher speed reel to reel. (I am sure studio grade recording gear would too, but this is about stuff available to mere mortals.)

Connecting a high quality CD player direct to the audio inputs could clone a CD, on high quality VHS tape, with a few db noise added. Amazing!

If one took the time to add recording index marks as things were happening, the player could fast forward and rewind to them. The speeds were reasonable, able to index past a whole CD in sub minute time frames. Plus or minus a few tunes would be seconds. Without those marks, one could input a plus or minus time offset and the machine would zip right to it perfectly. With them, it was plus or minus X number of marks.

I would label tapes with time offsets for albums and indexes for tunes. Was possible to work with a 2 to 6 hour recording and get what one wanted in no more than a minute. Spiffy!

And one could get 6 hours of slightly noiser audio recording (still better than just about anything other than high end reel to reel). One of the more memorable things I did was dump hours of a local radio station stunting classic rock tunes. It's a party tape. Used it a few times. People would ask about the source. This was very late 80's, and it was uncommon to have uninterrupted music available for an event. I did a few "mix" tapes too, 6 hours, curated sets, intended to frame the atmosphere of an event unattended. Those were fun.

I also used it to play computer game audio files into both my old VCS (Atari 2600 with Supercharger cassette cartridge) and 8 bit Color Computer 3. The index capability made cassette storage far more useful and faster than I expected. Was a fun lark. Basically, I had it hooked up, remote next to the machine. Just operate the VCR as needed, with remote right there, easy.

I still have a couple tapes. Nothing to play them on though. That machine got lost, along with some other things I'm still bent about, during a move.

Great tech, totally underappreciated.

One other thing:

These machines, if you got one capable of handling S-video, and used it with a high grade, or pro-grade CRT, basically delivered near DVD quality video. Most people never really got to see what NTSC SD can really do.

Today, people are collecting the pro video monitors and are revisiting older tech. It's better than many of us realized. I have one, and even an ordinary VHS punches a bit more than expected for it's "weight class."