How does a vcr head cleaner work

If your picture is getting fuzzy, a cleaning is probably in order. Issues like tracking and mechanical failure have nothing to do with how dirty the inside of your VCR is. It looks like a normal cassette on the outside, but the inside houses a special cleaning tape.

Along with the cassette, you also get a small bottle of cleaning solution. To use the cleaner, you simply put a few drops in the cassette, then run the tape for 20 seconds. The advertising images for the Trisonic cleaner can be a bit confusing. They show the cassette with a small hole in the front, for applying the cleaning solution to the tape.

However, the hole is papered over when you first open the package. Similarly, the cleaning solution nozzle comes sealed. Replacement solution is easily available, or you can just use rubbing alcohol when it runs out. That said, at only four drops per cleaning, it should last for quite a while.

That said, cleaning cassettes have their own inherent limitations. The tape eventually becomes saturated with grime, and will need to be replaced. This takes quite some time, though. Instead, a non-abrasive fabric gently wipes dust and grime off VCR heads and other parts.

This makes it the most convenient option of the bunch. To use the CleanDr, you simply insert the cassette and press play. After 30 seconds, rewind the cassette and eject it. The cassette is good for up to 30 cleanings, so it will last for quite some time.

Depending on how often you clean, it could last for 1, hours of video playback. This is particularly true for lubricant, which can be tough to take off without any kind of solvent.

It will certainly be noticeably cleaner than before you cleaned! A cassette can only be used to clean a VCR, but these swabs can be used for practically anything. Each one comes in its own sealed pouch, and is pre-moistened with a cleaning solution. You can use them for keyboards, mice, computer components, and other sensitive electronics.

The swabs themselves are rigid and well-constructed. Some duplicators cut corners on their tape stock. And if the last renter who used the tape had a dirty or misaligned machine, his problem is now yours, too. The first sign of dirty heads is a unstable playback picture-plagued by jiggling or bars of visual noise-which cannot be corrected by adjusting the tracking control. Hi-fi VCRs that record sound with video heads also suffer an erratic loss of sound when heads are clogged.

But which kind? There are three basic kinds of cleaners designed for use on VCRs: wet systems, dry abrasive systems and a magnetic tape-based system. The wet system touted by Allsop, Koss and others relies on a liquid solvent that is applied to a fabric material housed in a videocassette shell.

Wet systems are the only kind that promise to clean not only the heads but also the entire path that the tape takes through the VCR. However, using such a system is tricky. If you apply just a couple of extra drops of liquid onto the fabric, you can easily douse the heads with excess moisture, which will shut the VCR down, flagging you with a ''dew'' warning signal.

Then, too, the density of the fabric material-many times thicker than that of a recording tape-may put undue stress on the VCR mechanism, throwing the transport pulleys out of alignment. There's no hard and fast rule about how often your VCR needs some attention. It depends on how dusty your home gets and how often you still use your machine. If you're a regular tape watcher, then one cleaning a month should do it. You've probably seen the self-cleaning tapes that take a few minutes on the "play" setting to clean your VCR heads.

Professionals don't recommend using these tapes because of claims of poor cleaning and sometimes even damaging the tape heads. The only real way to clean your VCR is by cracking it open and doing it yourself. It's not as scary as it seems, though. We'll break it down on the next page.

The first thing you need to do in order to clean your VCR heads is to open it up so you can have access to all the dusty, moving parts. Once you have access to everything, assess the situation so you know what you're dealing with. You'll need some isopropyl alcohol, a can of air spray , cotton swabs, paper towels and a blank sheet of paper cut into one inch strips.

Before you do any cleaning, locate the parts you'll be cleaning, which are the parts that the tape comes into contact with -- the rollers and the heads. Next, blow out all of the loose clumps of dust with the can of air spray. This will allow you to pick them out by hand. Once the big stuff is gone, you need to clean three of the heads and all of the rollers. The control, audio and erase heads are all pretty simple to clean and the only heads you can use a cotton swab on.

Just wet the swab with alcohol and clean the sides of the heads and rollers. The read and write heads are what actually plays the tape, and they require a special technique. Your VCR may have as many as four heads, and they're all located on the large, round metallic drum. Professionals would use a chamois stick to do the following, but you can do the same thing with cut strips of paper. Soak one side of a paper strip in alcohol and rotate the drum in a counter clockwise rotation.