Indeed, there are a few of us with AG-1980s here on the forum. So if you get stuck, I'm sure there are people here that can do a nice transfer. Believe me, using a better deck makes a noticeable difference in quality. Judging by what you have already gotten out of the SWHS tape, running it through a better deck is likely to make it clearly the best quality version yet found.

Incidentally, the AG-1980 isn't exactly a "pro" deck. But my read of the situation is that when VHS was the home video format, people weren't imagining a market for decks that maximize getting the most out of digitizing damaged, old, or inferior tapes. So, after the fact, people have gone back and figured out which decks seem to produce the best results for that application. The AG-1980 is one of those decks, even though it sits rather in-between the pro and the consumer genres. The "pro" market was more concerned with producing the best tapes, or maximizing the quality of dubbing pristine tapes, and as such may not do as good a job as the AG-1980 or the JVC-96xx series when digitizing less-than-perfect tapes.