Crumpled Head Cleaner
 

Hey everyone,

The black tape of my Sony Mini Dv Head Cleaner was recently slightly crumpled, - it was stuck under the flapping plastic covering. Is it safe to continue using if I manually wind on the small crumpled section?

I really don't want to have to spend another €25 on a new one ;)

Thanks in advance,

Laurence

The cost you mention is about 3 times what we pay in the U.S. It's important not to touch the tape or allow any contamination to get onto it or into the tape compartment. If the tape is not badly damaged, roll it forward about 10 cm. and never wind it back over the exposed section. Keep track of the position of it on the tape, to avoid this. You need three hands to manually roll a DV tape. A friend comes in handy for this. You have to take the tip of a pen and push the locking brake, while you hold the hatch cover open and rotate the spindle of one reel. The brake is in a small opening near the center-bottom of the cassette and it needs to be pushed downwards.

You don't usually need to use a cleaning cassette often and I believe that unless a recorder shows distinct signs of needing a cleaning, you shouldn't do it routinely. Everytime you run a cleaning cassette, you cause some wear on the recording heads. I bought a cleaning cassette along with a VX2100 and two DV VCRs two years ago and it's still sealed in its plastic wrapper.

You speak the truth. I ruined the audio head on my first DV cam, a JVC DVL-120U, by excessive use of a cleaning tape. I kept the cam because it still might be good for something where I don't need audio. Maybe not - it's a consumer 1-chip and it sucks in low light, but I can't bring myself to throw it away.