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Nice..my field from 20 years ago.. The best way to clean the video heads is with the inside of a brown envelope..it's the closest I found to the chamois tipped pads sony used to sell for the purpose. Failing that newspaper is pretty good.. use dry, hold the paper against the drum with a finger and rotate the drum manually..you will feel the head through the paper.. 3 or 4 times back and forth will do it.
You will probably see a brown or black streak on the paper..if it doesn't improve the picture quality the heads are probably worn on abrasive tapes. An old scotch brand tape run for no more than 25 seconds will buff up worn heads, but it's not a good hack as they usually leave lots of debris in the head gap.
Q-Tips are lethal..they can chip the heads, ruining them!!
Video heads never need demagnatising because the recording bias does it automatically. Use a commercial demag wand for all metal guides etc in the tape path, and also on the audio head if you are getting swish on sound..follow the instructions and use a quality tool.
Tearing at top and bottom of the picture on old tapes is usually as a result of a slightly different tape path on an old machine, and a visible sync bar (black block) in the bottom centre few lines is a result of the recording machine having the head switching point set incorrectly..they weren't as precisely set up as modern ones, top tearing is the video head drum exit guide, and bottom tearing the entry guide.. Field roll and bad tracking is usually the audio head tracking height..The sync track is very small and below the audio tracks right on the bottom edge of the tape..the setting is critical. I'm getting far too technical here..this lot is from memory. ;-)
I still have a Ferguson/JVC 3v29 in perfect working order from 1983, with it's original heads.. The picture quality from new tapes is astounding, regular maintenance keeps these old top loaders in superb condition, shame the machine is only mono...
A guy called Steve Beeching wrote some excellent video setup and service guides back in the mid 80's..have a google for them.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 3. January 2007 @ 12:16
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