So only a week after I repaired my Sony VCR's power supply without the benefit of the service manual, guess what I came across on an unrelated search? No idea why I couldn't find this before; all I could see was shady sites that claimed to have it behind their paywalls. So in case anybody needs this in future, here's a copy of the PDF (13MB).
This service manual covers:
Some time ago I purchased a VCR player to use while digitising some family video tapes. It was the rather fancy Sony SLV-373UB with on-screen menu and massive jog-wheel remote control. Shortly after I had transferred the last video from tape, the VCR player quietly died—the front panel display turned off and it stopped responding to any input. Inserting a cassette didn't prompt it to pull it in and load it. I put the machine to one side and forgot about it for a long time. Now I have unearthed more tapes to digitise and dispose of, I've been trying to get the player working again. (The new tapes aren't anything exciting — old WordPerfect training videos).
Since the VCR is quite old (I think from 1990?) with no obvious mechanical problems before the failure, I suspected the power supply. Electrolytic capacitors from the 1990s tend to have dried out or leaked after thirty years so they're a first suspect for failures that don't involve loud bangs.