A weird issue - heads?

Warthog

Warthog

Active member
A few days ago the "dirty heads" light went off in my viewfinder. So I cleaned the heads, using isopropanol and Barry's guide (I have done this one time before). After that I tried some TDK tapes (nothing else available at our local store and I was out of Panasonic tapes) - 10 minutes everything OK, then the light went off again.

I got some new Panasonic tapes, cleaned the heads again and gave it a try. And now the weird issue comes - the camera appears to be recording normally, no "dirty heads" indication. When I use REC CHECK though, I can see the artifacts that would indicate dirty heads (like 10 horizontal stripes of which half displays the recording and the other half God knows what).

Now I switch to the VCR mode, rewind the tape a few minutes and then switch to play (moving the joystick up). The same artifacts as when using REC CHECK. But the weirdest thing is that when I pause the playback and then unpause it, the recording plays back just fine. If I insert an old tape, that was recorded properly, the playback behaviour is exactly the same. The camera is relatively new, some 80 hours on the counter.

Any ideas about what this could be and how to fix it? I have a few rather importants event coming up and not knowing what the #censored# is going on in my camera makes me pretty nervous.
 
hmm seems odd, after you hit pause and start to play they play back fine? Could be slack in the tape that is getting caught when you hit pause. Is there a chance any of the tentioners got damaged when you cleaned it?
 
I took the camera to a local Panny service point yesterday and they fixed it, although the guy was not really sure what the problem was. He said he had disassembled the tape mechanism, assembled it again, alinged and tightened everything properly and that did the trick. About one hour, less than 80 Euro.

Still this pushed me a step closer to a solid state solution (probably AF 100 and if that is too bulky and I can't use it for what I do, then HMC 150).
 
Sounds like your heads may have been slightly misaligned. Would explain why you had crazy "banding" that would occur with dirty recording heads, but no errors.
 
Warthog said:
Still this pushed me a step closer to a solid state solution (probably AF 100 and if that is too bulky and I can't use it for what I do, then HMC 150).
Click to expand...

The just announced AC130/AC160 seem like Panasonic's replacement for the HMC150 so may want to check it out.
 
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