How to clean a VCR tape.

Tämmönen tuli vastaan. Onko kokemuksia?

Here we go folks: an easy to follow guide to turn your binners back into winners, with my follow the bouncing ball guide to get rid of that mould!

1. You've just plucked out that rare tape to find: SHOCK HORROR! It's covered in mould:



* Now, first make sure that the mould has dried and become powder-like, as in the example above. If it still looks a bit greeny or moist-like in appearance then 

wait for the mould to dry out

. This can be achieved by putting the tape in a very dry (slightly warm) place with no humidity. Mould likes water. No water in the air = mould dies and dries out. If you insert a still active mouldy cassette into your machine and fast forward or rewind it, you will risk snapping the tape as it will skid when it's spooling.

2. A bottle of Isopropanol (Isopropyl alcohol) is require. Copies of Bloody Moon on VHS, Beta and V2000 are nice to have, but just act as a cosmetic in this example.



3. Put the tape into a variable speed VCR. No old clunkers. We need a VCR that varies the speed of spooling. Fast forward right to the end and then eject. You will notice that mould detritus can be seen through the left hand side cassette window stuck to the underside of the left spool:



4. Open up the cassette housing. If you don't know how to do this, then practice on a new crap cassette to see how everything is positioned. As can be seen the white mould has collected on the tape guiding pins, the threading gate, the underside of the left spool and around the housing of the cassette (both top and bottom halves). This should be completely removed with a lint-free cloth soaked with Isopropanol.




5. While we are at the end, carefully removing any white spots with the cloth (again soaked in Isopropanol) from the actual Mylar itself. CAREFULLY! No bull in a china shop approach here… You will need to spool the tape back manually a few clicks to get rid of any white detritus which has collected on the tape further back (both sides).



6. Re-seat the spools. You now should have something that looks like this:



7. Put the cassette back together and rewind to the beginning. Repeat the procedure for the right hand spool and beginning of tape:




Now a final fast forward and rewind and we should have this:

Kukahan osaisi tämän tempun tehdä? Yksi nauha kaipaisi putsausta muutamasta homepilkusta. 

Amerikassa on myyty jotain vähän kasettia isompaa tapecleaner-laitetta, joskus näin kuvan siitä ulkomaan foorumilla ja sitten kun aloin juttua uudestaan etsimään niin ei enää löytynyt.