Anybody ever have a problem with persistant head clogging? I have 132 hours on my DVX100A and have been experiencing a persistant problem that occurs about every hour or so. I clean the heads and it comes back soon afterwards.

The tape stock is about one year old and has been checked as baggage in an overseas flight so it hasn't been stored well at all.

Any ideas? Thanks.

what tape are u using? The DVX has issues with non dry type tapes.. always did...

what if any messages do u get on ur monitor?

The Panasonic MQ tapes still in the wrappers. I did have a shoot a few weeks ago where we had to use Panasonic ME tape stock. But I only shot about 2 hours on it.

The most common culprit of clogged heads is some form of moisture being introduced to the tape-head contact point.
Air conditioning cools the air and causes moisture to form from the humid air. Similar to a cold drink forming water on the outside of the glass. The Demon is moisture, and either the tape or the camera heads or both are the target. If moisture is introduced it causes instant friction that the spinning heads will take off the coating and clog the heads with the iron oxide (or whatever tape formula) particles. The point here is that if you acclimate the camera but keep the tapes in the air conditioning, or vice versa, the same condition exists.
By the way, if you live in a cold climate this situation exists also. I've always allowed at least an hour for things to settle down but I don't know if that's a standard. Oh and the dew light only tells you if the CAMERA is too wet. If you put in a tape right in from an air conditioned environment and plop it in the camera . . . poof clogged heads.

I'm pretty much aware of the moisture/condensation problems from shifts in temp but the tapes and camera weren't subject to that kind of change. Good idea and I wish it were that simple but I'm thinking bad batch of tapes as they all came from one 5-pack.

I just got new tape stock and I'll see how it goes in LA this week. I'm hoping that solves it. Otherwise I keep having to stop and clean heads during the shoot. Grrrrrrrrrr...

Otherwise I keep having to stop and clean heads during the shoot. Grrrrrrrrrr...

Otherwise I would suggest you give service center a try. It is no good to use clean tape if error continue occurs.

I had similar problems (on another brand camcorder). I religiously use Sony tapes, and in a pinch had to buy a Maxell Head Cleaner, every other tape started glitching. When I finally got back to civilization, I put in the Sony Head cleaner and the glitching completely disappeared.

This is all anecdotal of course, but that was my experience.

Used the new Panasonic AY-DVM63AMQ tape stock and the clogging stopped. I'm assuming it was the old tape stock.