VCR head faulty?

[Squallman]

[Attachment 90364 - Click to enlarge]

This is how my head drum looks inside my crt vcr tv.
See at the bottom its kind of greyish and not mirror Clean Like the top?

What is this? Im not getting any video, it used to be bad so i tried to
Clean it with alcohol and copy paper but it got worse.

I really dont want an external vhs player. Is it salvagable?

[betwixt]

It looks like something has worn the shine off the drum which is not good but in itself not going to stop it working. The heads are the important part and they are in tiny slots in the drum (not visible in your picture). It is possible that whatever scuffed the drum also damaged the heads but its impossible to tell after the event.

The tape passes horizontally with its bottom edge sitting in the shallow slot just above the black pointed part, the inclined drum lets the heads sweep the tape at an angle as it spins and the tape traverses it, hence the term "helical scan".

If you can source a new drum/head assembly it would be fixable but parts are hard to find these days. The heads are sometimes available on their own but either way, you really need an alignment kit to set it up properly.

Brian.

[timtape]

The top section of the drum is basically what the drum surface should look like - polished to a mirror finish as it was from the factory. The scoring/scratching on the lower section is severe. It may have been caused by dust and dirt caught between the tape and spinning drum. VCR's and tapes are designed to work in a very clean environment.

Possibly the VCR being built into a CRT TV set had been been exposed to dust entry due to the need to ventilate the cabinet for cooling of the CRT type TV. Perhaps attempting to clean the drum and heads transferred some of the internal dust onto the drum.

[Squallman]

Thank you so much for the answers.

I thought i used to much alcohol when i cleaned it and immediately tried a new tape and somehow that made everything worse.
The symptom was my screen was black with white static disturbances but after running a tape for 5 minutes
it progressively got better until it got great. However I wanted to get rid of this beginning disturbance so I tried to clean it and now its only black forever. Sometimes when i fast forward I can see picture.

[pandy]

Thank you so much for the answers.

I thought i used to much alcohol when i cleaned it and immediately tried a new tape and somehow that made everything worse.
The symptom was my screen was black with white static disturbances but after running a tape for 5 minutes
it progressively got better until it got great. However I wanted to get rid of this beginning disturbance so I tried to clean it and now its only black forever. Sometimes when i fast forward I can see picture.

This is probably mechanical worn - looks like something very abrasive scratched drum surface so definitely not alcohol problem.
Lack of video may be symptom of broken/corrupted video heads.
Lack of polished surface will ruin tapes.
You probably need to think about drum replace or use another VCR.

[dellsam34]

Most likely the video heads are fine and require special deep cleaning beyond the regular paper and alcohol trick, But obviously this was a workhorse around kids for who knows how many years without care and periodic maintenance, Since it's a combo CRT/VCR I don't think it's worth fixing, just get a good working VCR and take good care of it.

[betwixt]

Interesting that the marks are around the drum and not the tape path though, that does tend to suggest it was caused by cleaning. Nevertheless, its the heads that matter not the drum surface.

Brian.

[dellsam34]

Because the drum spins at 1800 rpm, the rest of the tape path parts are immobile.

[betwixt]

I appreciate that, I worked on VHS equipment since the 1980s!
What i meant was that if the marks came from tape abrasion they would be horizontal on the head pedestal and the spinning motion would distribute them over the whole of the drum. Because they are around the drum's rotation axis, it implies something inclined at drum angle caused them.

Brian.

[Squallman]

Thanks again everyone for the replies. I dont know how this could be caused. It seems to get worse, I am using a vhs cleaning tape
and its no improving, its getting worse, I think I will make one last effort to open it up again and use lint free qtips and
clean the heads. Because honestly before these replies I though the whole spinning drum was the head reading
the tapes 🙂. I have a complete black screen now so it cant get worse. I read that crt screens can be dangerous to work
Inside though so I will be careful. I will let you all know if there is any progress, good or bad.

Thank you all.

[dellsam34]

I appreciate that, I worked on VHS equipment since the 1980s!
What i meant was that if the marks came from tape abrasion they would be horizontal on the head pedestal and the spinning motion would distribute them over the whole of the drum. Because they are around the drum's rotation axis, it implies something inclined at drum angle caused them.

Brian.

Well, the junk is always closer to the heads area, because the heads tend to scrape it off of a dirty tape and spins it, by the time it leaves the head area where tension is greater due to the head contact with tape it flies off as the there is less tension away from the heads. I've been tinkering with VCRs since the 90's and I've seen countless cases like this.

[davexnet]

I once came across a dry cleaning tape that did something similar after just a few seconds.
I put it down to it being too coarse for its purpose and I never it used it again

[dellsam34]

Yes, it will never work again as intended, The head drum could be removed and polished but it is not worth it for a VCR/TV combo, a rare format machine maybe, not VHS.