Many people blame dirty heads for every problem their video has from tapes not ejecting to channels not tuned! the only thing head cleaning can fix is poor playback and tracking quality (some units display a blue screen when they cant track the tape).

The first thing to do when attempting manual cleaning is to unplug the VCR and take the lid off. make sure you unplug the power as there are many high voltages in a VCR and you don’t want to get fried. Next identify the head drum it is the large shinny silver (sometimes gold) drum that sits in front of where a loaded tape would be. On the bottom of the drum would be two to sometimes four or 6 small black chips about the size of a flat match, these are the heads and are extremely fragile. do not poke them or touch them with anything sharp etc as they are fragile and expensive. if a head gets broken you would have to buy a new head drum and this is very expensive, we know we have repeated ourselves a bit here but we wanted to point out how fragile the heads can be.

To clean by hand, you will need what are called ‘head cleaning sticks’. These are covered by a type of chamois and are safe to use if used properly, some people also use paper but great care must be taken. Firstly moisten the cleaning stick with head cleaner which is probably just pure isopropyl alcohol then place the flat chamois part next to the head drum, Do not rub the stick on the drum you may break a head off. With the moist stick against the drum you should be able to move the drum around as they normally will spin freely. After a couple of revolutions of the drum you can take the stick away and you may not some dirt is now on the stick. when using isopropyl alcohol you will need to leave the unit sit for a few minuets before reassembly and testing, to allow any excess moisture to evaporate. one final point is never use cotton buds (q-tips) to clean the heads as the fluff from the cotton bud will catch on the head either damaging the head or making the picture worse and never tip the alcohol directly on the mechanism.

Symptoms of dirty heads include loss of treble, muffled sound, low volume and sometimes chewed tapes. To clean heads professionally you can forget about head cleaning tapes, these are good as a preventative measure only and may not clean away some of the caked on oxide that can accumulate on your heads.

First we need to do a visual inspection, 90% of units will have good access to the deck, if you open the door and look inside you will notice two or three things. in the middle there is a metal box with a rectangular strip on it this is the playback and record head, (if you unit does record) there will be a similar box on the left, this is the erase head and on the right is a rubber wheel below a shaft this is the pinch roller and capstan.

If there are any signs of brown oxide on the head or pinch roller its time to clean it up. some cassette doors will clip off to give you better access take a look at the side of the door when its open if it looks like it is a two piece door try to gently unclip by lifting upwards, if you cant unclip don’t worry about it as you don’t want to force it and maybe break it. next use some alcohol or maybe Mentholated Spirits on a rag or cotton bud to clean the head and pinch roller. never use any thing sharp or hard near the head if the oxide is caked on the head use a soft cream polish like silvo or brasso, never use steel wool. leave sit to allow pinch roller to dry out, then test. You should now hear an improvement in audio quality, most notably an improvement in the treble range.

If it looks like a new CD and is not a recordable CD (some players don’t like recordable CDs) then this is the CD we will use for test. Put it in the player most players should read the table of contents (toc) within 2 to 3 seconds, now press play. Did the player take a long time to play track one and is it skipping? now try the last track, it too should play within a few seconds and not skip.

If your unit failed any of these tests it maybe time to clean the lens. CD lens cleaners do work in 50% of cases but if its too dirty, cleaning it manually is the only way to go. If your unit is a multi disk unit or 3 in one I recommend trying the CD cleaner as access to the CD lens in one of these type of units ranges from difficult to impossible and best left to the experts. Other home component type units are often easy to work on sometimes with only 4 screws needing to be removed. Firstly unplug the unit unscrew the top and remove, you should see the CD deck in the unit take a look for a black box with a blue lens (it maybe under the CD clamper) this what you want to clean.

You will need cotton buds and I recommend isopropyl alcohol, never use turps, thinners or anything sharp. All it takes is a quick twirl of the cotton bud and perhaps a quick go of the dry end to clean away any excess alcohol. If the lens is dusty or cloudy this should have fixed your skipping problems (smokers unit often suffer from a cloudy CD lens) try out your CD again if the problem persists, it maybe time to take it for repair or remembering laser replacement may be more expensive than a new unit perhaps its time you purchased a new CD or DVD player, you can check out a few of our recommendations below.

In case you move town, buy a new video recorder or a new channel starts broadcasting you may need to adjust your tuning. Every country has a different range of TV bands and channels for example the UK only use the UHF band while Australia and New Zealand use VLF, VHF and UHF. Tuning the channels in should be similar across all countries. Bearing this in mind we are trying to present this info to suit all audiences and can only give a general overview of how to tune in your set. We hope the info is of help and for this example we are going to tune in the UHF channel 31 but the same principals can be applied to any channel.

Push Button Tuning

If your TV set has ‘push buttons’ and is about 20 or so years old you will find a group of wheels and selectors under the tuning door and you will need to follow these instructions:

Switch off the AFT (Automatic Fine Tuner). Sometimes this is done automatically when the tuning door is opened.
Push the button on which you want channel 31 to appear. (don’t use a button you currently use for another channel or your video) Open your TV tuning door. This will reveal a series of selectors and tuning wheels. Each selector and its adjacent tuning wheel is associated with a tuning button on the front of the TV. For example, the third tuning button is connected to the third selector switch and the third tuning wheel.

As channel 31 is on the UHF Band you will need to set the selector switch to UHF if your set is capable of tuning multiple bands (ie: you may not have this selector in the UK). Labelling of these channel ranges varies from brand to brand, but UHF is usually U, UHF, C, or 3. the other 2 spots will be VL and VH or A and B etc.

Turn the corresponding tuning wheel slowly clockwise until the channel 31 appears on the TV screen or until the little pointer indicates you have reached the end of the tuning range. If channel 31 does not appear, then begin turning the tuning wheel anti-clockwise until Channel 31 is found. Perhaps there are other channels in your area on the UHF band (lets say channel 28) if you find this one you are getting close so keep trying either side. It generally takes about twenty turns of the tuning wheel to cover the range of band selected. When the desired channel appears on the TV screen, adjust the tuning wheel for the best picture and sound. Turn on the AFT and close the tuning drawer (or door).

More Modern Sets

Every set built in the past 15 or so years seems to have a different way of tuning in the channels with the tuning via an on screen display, if you can find your TV instruction manual try and follow it carefully most have an automatic tuning mode which it will want to default to when first entering the tuning mode. Automatic tuning is good if you cant figure out your tuning but the problem is it will not put the channels under their desired channels numbers. Some set are terrible to tune even stumping the most experienced TV technician, while others are simple. TV sets don’t detune themselves so if it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it, your fuzzy picture may be due to another reason, like your VCR, cables or antenna.

Still got problems

Ask your neighbors, perhaps you are not in the optimum area for the channel you are tuning, ask a neighbor with a similar looking antenna what his picture is like.

Do you have the correct antenna? In Australia Several older homes do not have UHF antennas as there was not UHF transmissions prior to the 70s, if so you will need to get your antenna checked as you wont be able to receive UHF channels.

Does your TV only have one rotary control with no U position? Your TV is probably unable to receive UHF as several older Australian sets were not built for UHF, If you have a VCR you should be able to tune this into receive UHF channels.

Firstly if you are using your DVD player on only a TV or with only a Pro-Logic amplifier this should be reasonably straight forward just plug in the 3 RCA cables to a spare video /DVD in socket, the yellow one will be the video and the red and white are the stereo audio cables (red being the right channel).

If you have a Dolby Digital or a DTS amp it gets more complex as an additional cable can be used to get the full 5.1 sound experience. If your not sure what type of amp you have their will generally be a logo on the front of either DTS or Dolly Digital, Don’t confuse Dolby Pro-Logic with Dolby Digital, a Pro-Logic amp wont be able to take a digital input. If you are still unsure what all this means jump over to our Surround Sound guide for a deeper explanation.

Many DVD players will have an optical out plug its a small black square hole that may have a dust cap sitting in it. when playing a DVD this will light up red and this is how the sound is going to travel to your amp, Through a special fiber optic cable that has no wire in it but a clear length of plastic that transmits the modulated light to the back of the amp.

Now that we have this optical cable plugged in we have to maker sure the amp and DVD are setup to use it, every model amp and DVD player are different so this will be hard to describe for all models, so its best to have your manuals on hand when doing this. Your DVD player may have to be setup to turn on the digital output and as well as that you may have to select the format the audio is in, the best way if you are unsure what format is to experiment until it works. If you leave your amp on digital and auto, as soon as you select the right format the amp will most likely display Dolby Digital or DTS on the display and you will hear sound.

Not all DVDs are recorded in DTS while almost all will be recorded in Dolby Digital. A DTS film will have a Dolby Digital soundtrack as well and in most cases you will have to select DTS when playing the film or it will use the default Dolby Digital soundtrack.

Some low end DVD players may not be able to support DTS at all and and some will only have a coax digital out instead of the optical digital output. The coax output can be treated like an optical output in the fact that it can support Dolby Digital and DTS, but your amp may have limited options for connecting a coax connector. Many 5.1 amps will only have one input for a digital coax and you may not be able to connect the video signal through the amp on the same input as the coax connector is on the amp may be for CD input only. never confuse the coax connector with the left and right stereo connectors, although they have the same type of plugs (RCA) they will not work together, as the stereo connectors are analogue and the coax is digital.

One last note to remember is that you may not be able to watch a DVD via a video recorder as most discs have a copy protection format (called macrovision) on the disc to stop us making a copy of the disc, this can cause problems when watching a movie via your VCR.