VCR Maintenance

[marksk918]

While I'm still searching ebay for a good VCR I'd like to take care of machines I already have. What kind of maintenance is recommended to keep the machines running smoothly and keep a nice picture? What is the proper method for cleaning the heads?

thanks!

[ROF]

Remove Cover.

Clean out any dust, hair, or other debris from boards and circuitry. A soft bristle paint brush works good.

See Large Shiny Metal Drum (Head Drum)

Using isopropyl alcohol and cleaning pad, place wet(not soaked) pad onto head and manually rotate head. Do not wipe pad allow head to spin around.

Using the above procedure locate all capstans and rollers (places the tape touches) and clean those in the same manner. Clean all belts or pulleys that move the tape to proper locations.

Let machine sit for a few minutes before usage.

You may need to repeat the steps above several times to achieve proper cleanliness. Do not put cover back on until you are satisfied.

If you've never seen a VCR Tape in action. Put one in and hit play with the cover off. This will help you to determine what components could use further cleaning.

[ozymango]

Good advice from ROF, that should be a sticky.

Is this deck going to be used primarily for playing back a random selection of tapes, or for recording/transfering "new" tapes (new meaning new tape stock)? If you're going to be playing back just pretty much anything, in any condition, and you play back a lot of different tapes, I'd recommend doing what ROF said here every couple of weeks, see what kind of gunk you find inside your deck. Depending on the age/quality of your tapes, some shed more than others.

If you work a lot with new tapes (recording your own blanks), find a good brand and do not run grade-z discount VHS tapes in your deck, these can be pretty nasty (I found this out the hard way with some dollar store tapes, ush).

Oh, and when you buy the isopropyl alcohol, read the fine print -- make sure it's like 99% alcohol, sometimes you might see cheap "rubbing alcohol" that's something like 20% alcohol and 80% water. But again the label should be clearly marked (sometimes in small letters, though).

[ROF]

Another good tip is to never use canned air on circuit boards. If you do, allow several minutes or an hour for them to dry. Compressed air contains moisture and while it may not be visible to your eye, your electronics board just may find a drop or two which could cause more problems then your routine cleaning will fix.

I've always told people the best air comes from within you. as long as you don't have one of those mouths that likes to spew forth liquid. You may gasp on the dust but removing the cover, turning the case upside down and blowing a deep breathe of air across the boards is much better than those compressed systems. It's also considerably cheaper.

If you find the need to use compressed air, always make sure the can stays upright. Never tilt it. You may also want to spray a few "spurts" of air away from your project to ensure only air is coming out of the can.

[marksk918]

Thanks. What kind of cleaning pad would you recommend for the head? I know cotton swabs will get could on the head, but can it be used on the rollers and other parts on the tape path?

I'll be using it for capturing 10-20 year old tapes through my camcorder to my pc and occasionally for recording. I always stuck with TDK and Maxell tapes, never the no-name brand.

[ROF]

I'd recommend a foam brush you can find where most acrylic paints are sold.

For the others you can use cotton swabs or even the same brush. Just make sure after you clean the head that the brush is clean before you use it on other surfaces.

[davideck]

What kind of cleaning pad would you recommend for the head?

Chamois Sticks used to be available for this purpose.
Now I just wet a small region of a chamois cloth and apply pressure with my index finger while I rotate the heads.

[TBoneit]

Another good tip is to never use canned air on circuit boards. If you do, allow several minutes or an hour for them to dry. Compressed air contains moisture and while it may not be visible to your eye, your electronics board just may find a drop or two which could cause more problems then your routine cleaning will fix.

I've always told people the best air comes from within you. as long as you don't have one of those mouths that likes to spew forth liquid. You may gasp on the dust but removing the cover, turning the case upside down and blowing a deep breathe of air across the boards is much better than those compressed systems. It's also considerably cheaper.

If you find the need to use compressed air, always make sure the can stays upright. Never tilt it. You may also want to spray a few "spurts" of air away from your project to ensure only air is coming out of the can.

Compressed air can contain moisture, that is why you never use service station air hoses.

OTOH I doubt that most of the canned air even contains air let alone moisture as the can would have to be very strong. The ones I've seen use a Petroleum Hydrocarbon and are marked "Extremely Flammable"

I suspect what is used, is used because it vaporizes at room temperature and is put into the can as a liquid. If you shake these cans the liquid sloshes and most likely only needs a low pressure to keep liquid. BTW th can gets cold in use as the liquid boils off. Same effect as your Air Conditioner uses to cool. I have a suspicion that early cans of air used something like Freon or a fluorocarbon that is now banned, I suspect they were used because the are not as flammable.

Cheers

[ozymango]

If you find the need to use compressed air, always make sure the can stays upright. Never tilt it. You may also want to spray a few "spurts" of air away from your project to ensure only air is coming out of the can.

Yeah, I think it's more the "air conditioner" effect that causes the moisture on the circuitry but in any case, if you do use "canned air" to clean parts, do be careful and let the thing sit for a while afterwards to make sure it's dry before using it. Even a very small drop of water in the tape heads can be fatal, alas.

I'm guessing what most likely happens is (depending on the humidity of your work environment), when you blast "canned air" on parts, the "air" come out of the nozzle at a very low temperature (insert physics lesson here about rapidly expanding gas and temperature drop), you cool the various parts and you know how a cold glass, when exposed to (humid) air, soon has moisture condensing on it? This can easily happen inside a VCR, especially when it comes to big hunks of metal like a video head drum -- you blast it for a few seconds, its temperature drops to 40 F, and any moisture in the air is on that drum like white on rice.

So you wanna make sure whatever you end up blasting sits long enough afterwards for any moisture to dissipate -- and if there is any doubt as to if its sat long enough or not, let it sit a while longer. Better safe than sorry!

[TBoneit]

Actually ROF wrote that and it was in the quote from him.

I totally agree with ozymango, I just observed moisture form yesterday (Tuesday) on a fan enclosure for a laptop that was really dirty when we blew it out. Took more than a couple of brief blasts.

Anyhow I would never use compressed anything on a videotape head just from fear that it knocked the heads out of alignment. My belief and I stress belief is that the heads are strongest in the horizontal plane that the heads spin in if you watch tem spin you'll see what I mean and if you clean them always clean them in the same plane they spin in. So that I'm guess that there is a risk, minimal maybe, but a risk that blowing against the broad surface could shift them, same with cleaning in a 90% angle to their plane of rotation.

OTOH I think they are neat for cleaning CPU and Chipset Heatsink & fan assemblys and blowing out those hard to reach nooks and crannies in a computer.

Cheers

[Marvingj]

Does anyone uses those Dry Tapes Anymore to Clean Heads. It has been awhile since I've seen them..

[ozymango]

Does anyone uses those Dry Tapes Anymore to Clean Heads. It has been awhile since I've seen them..

Haven't used on in a while but I believe there are two types -- one is actually some kind of "fiber" or cloth "tape" that you play (with or without a few drops of some "cleaning" liquid), the other is a regular videotape that has some kind of slightly abrasive texture, I believe. Anyway, when I worked at a video transfer place, many years ago now, we sold a Scotch head-cleaning cassette (VHS) that had a slightly abrasive texture and it even had an on-screen message, "When you can read this clearly your VCR heads are clean."

But we found these only worked on very mildly clogged heads; like if you could see most of the picture but there was some dust in there causing it to look like the tracking was off a bit. If you didn't have any picture at all, it was all snow, and played one of these cleaning tapes, it pretty much didn't do jack. And I'm not really excited about the idea of putting even slightly abrasive material in those delicate tape paths. But they did work (sometimes) and I never heard of one destroying a tape deck, so there's that.

The "dry" cleaners that used some kind of fiber/cloth cleaning material, however, I stay away from. Do they even still sell those anymore?

One "trick" I learned for cleaning slight head clogs -- just get a good tape, a really good blank, like TDK super-duper quality, you know the kind you can still find , and just pop it in the offending deck, tune to some channel, press "record," and let it record for a while, say 15 minutes to start. Then pop in a known good tape, press Play, and see if the picture cleared up. Basically you're just running a nice, clean tape through the path, a low-key version of the Scotch head cleaner, but you'd be surprised how often this has worked!

[BrainStorm69]

Personally, I would never blow canned or compressed air into/onto my VCR to remove dust. There is way too much of a likelihood that you will blow dust/dirt right onto a lubricated part that moves, and all you have done at that point is caused a bigger problem.

I actually use a two step process. First, I have a canister vacuum cleaner with a flexible hose that I use very carefully to vacuum up the loose dirt/dust. I never actually touch any part of the VCR with the hose end. Then I go over things a second time using a small pigbristle brush to lightly "dust off" the parts while again holding the vacuum above to suck up what the brush loosens.

I tried just using compressed air once (before figuring out my current method). I ended up with a a annoying squeak in the vcr that wasn't there before I used the compressed air. Good thing it wasn't one of my really good VCRs.

[ROF]

Those vacuums are excellent. When buying one look for one that has a flexible hose and a few attachments for the end. I have one that has a wand and also several brushes (stiff/horsehair) for use depending upon the application. Those brushes can make all the difference especially in a machine that has several fast moving parts. Dirt tends to pile up in nooks and crannies. A typical electronics vac can't loosen the dirt so you have to do it manually. Having the brush attachment is just an added convenience but it saves alot of frustration as you try to angle the vacuum hose into the area where the dirt is only to realize you need to stop and find a brush.

Another tip for those compressed air users: Always make sure the can isn't kept in a cooler than room temperature location. If it is bring the can into the area you plan to work and allow it sit for a while. if the can is too cool alot more moisture is released with each spray.

[Ron B]

I use a Chinese Bristle paint brush to clean the inside of my VCRs and computers. It also works great to clean the dust off cameras. Sometimes I use air from an air compressor, usually only during major cleaning sessions. I use alcohol and head swabs to clean the heads and rollers. I usually don't clean the heads unless I see some degradation of the playback. Cleaning them too much is not a good idea.
I use a dry Sony cleaning tape on my TRV900 because using a cleaning tape moistened with alcohol or cleaning solution activates the moisture sensor and shuts the camera off. I really use this dry cleaning tape sparingly, only when absolutely necessary. Don't use this kind of tape on my VCRs, clean those with swabs.
Keep your VCRs and DVD players covered with something to keep the dust off. Then you won't have to clean them so much.

[marksk918]

Thanks for all the responses. Is there anything else to do other than clean the heads and clear dust from the machine? Should the heads be aligned at some point?

[ozymango]

Is there anything else to do other than clean the heads and clear dust from the machine? Should the heads be aligned at some point?

I wouldn't worry too much about the video heads except just keeping them (and the head drum) clean -- I've got VCRs from the 80's that still play and I've never had to have a head alignment yet. Also I'd guess that the charge to replace/repair video head drums in a consumer deck would be fairly pricey, so unless your deck is some primo piece of equipment, if the heads got out of alignment I'd say it's new VCR time.

But the other thing I would do is check out all the belts and rubber pulleys and idler wheels inside the deck, any of those soft black rubber parts that transport the tape and will sooner or later (and usually right in the middle of an important tape) snap in two or disintegrate. In the old days a lot of VCRs had half a dozen different belts, pulleys, and what-not, but many newer decks have fewer moving parts to you may only need one or two belts, couple of pulleys ... my local Fry's Electronics has a stack of VCR belts and pulleys for a few bucks each and if you haven't got one close by, check the web for "VCR belts" and plug in your VCR make and model, you'll usually find something not too expensive.

It's not a bad idea to replace a belt or pulley before it goes; you can inspect the rubber parts by looking (with a magnifying glass, if necessary) and see if the rubber is smooth or does it have little tiny "cracks" on the surface. Or if it feels hard as opposed to soft (you should be able to "dent" any soft rubber item with your fingernail, gently), it's a good idea to replace it. I prefer replacing before they break simply because when they break, they can scatter into pieces inside the deck or disappear under some component, and if you don't already have a replacement belt handy, it can be difficult to match a new belt to five piece of broken old belt.