Morning, folks (at least, it is here).
My trusty GL-1, which I was using to copy my old mini-DV tapes (10 to 1 years old) to file for longer-term storage, has given out on me, and Canon no longer repairs the model. The problem appears to be tape transport; I'm getting rolling images or stutters (yes, I fast-forwarded and rewound tapes to "prime" them, which eliminated stuttering in early ones) and now EJECT TAPE" messages. Cleaning tape has not had any affect. Whether it's a simple C&A matter or something more, I have no idea.
Since I'm in Virginia, shipping to the West Coast is not my first preference, but I'll do what I need to. I need a reliable shop that might have the parts on hand.
Barring that, I would appreciate any recommendations on a used camera for playing the tapes.Does it make a difference? I don't know enough about the electronics to discern whether I'll lose quality with a fairly cheap model, even though digital is supposed to be just numbers.
Many thanks, and a promising new year to one and all.

My school depended on GL2 camcorders for quite some time. In speaking with my local fave video engineer / repair guy, he told me that he'd be happy to take them apart and clean the entire tape path (which many times is all you need), but that Canon did not sell parts to independant repair centers, he couldn't get them.

It probably is worth the extensive cleaning and potential adjustments that most indie repair facilities can do before chucking your GL1. He helped us out many times with our GL2s.

If you do need to go for something new, it is most likely to work fine on your mini-DV SD tapes. That was a pretty solid standard, and you should be able to jump brands easily. Assuming you are capturing (ingesting) via firewire (the right way!), if a tape plays successfully and the signal is present on the firewire then quality is equal between various decks and camcorders, regardless of initial cost.

(avoid capture with wondershare and similar programs that transcode the video immediately upon capture. You want either a (windows) DV/AVI file or a (mac) DV/MOV at the end of the process)

Thank you, Seth.