Pro VCR Deck

Getting ready to add an old Panasonic or Sony Pro VCR deck to my studio. Not SVHS just regular VHS. Bal XLR Audio in / out with timecode. I'm probably gonna do vocals direct to the VCR slaved to other gear. Of course I'm doing this for the sound of "tape." I have an old Tascam 122mkII and I love the sound of that cassette deck. Wondering if anyone could steer me away from the vcr deck, as I was gonna pick up a cheap reel to reel, but that's a little too much hassle and size, and I think I can get "some" of the sound I want from the VCR decks, of course with only 2 channels, which I can't can't choose which channel I record to. Anyone familiar with the sound and could drop some info on me, or no?

Well, I know it's kind of confusing, but the HiFi track indeed IS analog (but "not really", as I said), only that the audio is not electromagnetically printed onto the tape, but intermodulated (up-modulated) with the picture itself. It doesn't matter if the picture is simply black, of course. ADAT technology is real 16 (later 20) bit digital PCM AFAIK. Those SVHS tapes were just readily available at the time, and the tape formula was made for an acceptable error rate. The machines weren't though :)

If you're after the 'saturated tape' sound, you could also use a 3 head cassette deck/reel2reel machine as a realtime fx and save the (SPMTE)sync hassle. It would work as a hardware plugin with a delay as long as the time the tape needs to travel from the recording- to the playback head (+ DA/AD conversion).