It was such a pleasure dealing with this seller! I was fortunate enough to live in the same city and pick up the Sony UVW-1800 BetacamSP deck. It was exactly as described in the posting. I've been using it consistently for over 2 months now digitizing and it's performing flawlessly.
I don't know if you'll find a much more knowledgable professional tape based deck technical seller in the US. I feel very fortunate to have met him and look forward to future transactions.