OT: Cleaning video head on my Betamax VCR

[Tim]

On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 21:20 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> *Denatured* alcohol!

Yes.  For those unfamiliar with the term, the usual cleaning alcohols
that you can buy are deliberately *poisoned* to stop people drinking
them (go figure!).  I had to convince the local pharmacist to give me
some untainted alcohol at one stage.  Later on, I had an even hard time
convincing customs and excise to let me buy pure alcohol.  They only
relented after telling them about how poisonous and dangerous the
alternatives were.

That tainting is bad news for cleaning video and audio heads.  They can
be used, if you're desperate, and you wipe things clean and dry, instead
of just letting them evaporate.  They contain a variety of things that
you don't want left behind on the heads, and that's very easy to do.
You're much better off finding something more appropriate.

Be especially careful cleaning anything plastic or rubber, solvents can
destroy them.  Remember that on the audio heads, at least, the head
block unit might have the magnetic part of the head embedded in a
plastic material.

Do NOT use turps.

>   And a Q-tip.

No, unless you're familiar with cleaning video heads, I wouldn't
recommend them.  You stand a good chance of snagging fibres on the head.
Especially the tiny little things in domestic machines.

The old rule of thumb was to use a chamois, but it's hard to find one
that's not oil soaked, and the artificial ones mightn't be suitable,
either.

Like Gene, I work in this industry.  But I don't think I'd be keen on
using paint thinner, though.  I think they still use glues within the
head drum to hold the tiny parts of the head in place.  The monster
sized heads from old two-inch quad VTRs, and even the one-inch machines
are very different from the tiny things in Beta and VHS.

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