[sabkisscrue]

I would start by getting your friends tapes or even better asking your friend to contact the people he got HIS tapes from and getting their 1st gens or masters. Your tapes arent worth transferring. You want the lowest possible generation tapes to transfer, first of all.
Second of all, you already own a 9800, you need to look for pro quality s-video wires such as the ones I use AR Pro II Series, two of them one to connect from the vcr to the es10 and another from the es10 to the camera. They get the most sharpness and color and clarity out of the picture.
Next, you need to make sure your camera has "analog to digital pass through" and a tbc/dnr feature. Because, unlike what anybody else has mentioned in this thread, you must clean the noise up on these tapes. This is the biggest issue with vhs. Next, you need a Panasonic ES10 DVD Recorder, simply to be used as a pass through and black level corrector, you set both in and output black levels to darker and the line in NR on. This unit helps to fix some jitter you get when turning the 9800's tbc/dnr on. Finally, everybody says to get a Canopus, dont. We're talking VHS here. It has to be cleaned up and it has to go through noise reduction filters.
The JVC DRM100 Dvd Recorder that I use has probably the best encoder for transferring vhs tapes and it also happens to have noise reduction filters that really produce a result that is better than what your vhs looks like.
But again this also depends on getting and transferring the lowest possible generation sources, 1st gens.