Getting the best quality out of VHS is a rabbit hole I went down last year. There are a couple movies that I have that weren't released in any format besides VHS and I spent quite a lot of time trying to get the best quality digital copy I could. There are a dozen or so (mostly s-vhs jvc) models that have circuitry to stabilize the images and they start at $300 on ebay.
One was Norman's Awesome Experience (three people get sent back to Ancient Rome) and the other was a documentary Desmond Morris's The Human Animal which I eventually found a rip that claimed to be from DVD that was better than any that I managed (even though I haven't found the actual dvds for sale which makes me wonder if it was sourced from dvd)
