Cleaning an old 3/4" Sony Deck

Jim Brennan

Jim Brennan

VHS Member Old Skool
One of my clients asked me to digitize some old 3/4" tapes, so I scrounged around to find an old Sony U-Matic VO-5800.

I have no idea when the last time was that this thing had its heads cleaned. But some of tapes are pretty much unusable. But it is also possible that I can get a better quality if I clean this thing up. Any tips?
 
Find an old TV engineer. They know the insides of 3/4" decks like the back of their hand.

Thankfully ours still works when we need it.

- Mikko
 
just pop the top off, use head cleaner and tex wipes and manually clean the heads by holding the damp wipe stationary while rotating the heads against it. Hit all the pinch rollers while you're there. Don't fret as oxide flakes off while you are digitizing, just know you have one pass to grab footage as the tapes will often literally fall aprat as they are played. No previews. Hopefully they are already rewound. Don't hit play to find out. Look at their spool first.
 
The problem with the U-matic format is not only the decks, but also the tapes themselves. The tapes are so old that the binder is failing. The binder is what holds the magnetic particles on the tape. When you attempt to dub the tape - the tape plays for a minute or so until enough of the tape sloughs off to clog the heads. The user then cleans the heads and gives it another go, again the heds are clogged after a minute or so. Eventually the user declares the tapes dead and gives up on the process entirely.

The last ditch effort to save the content on U-matic tapes is to "bake" the tapes. This means warming the tapes to a temperature that will reset the glue (binder), but not so high as it will melt the tapes. There are facilities that will do this for you in exchange for a large sum of cash or you can try to cook your own at home. If it's done properly you should be able to play through the entire tape without repeated head clogs. If it's done improperly you will end up with a gooey mess of melted plastic.
 
I've been pecking away at this all weekend. This job is yielding me about 5 bucks an hour at this point.:) But whatever is happening is not doing anything to the deck, so I am not sure it is the binder. After working with some of the bad tapes, there were two that played fine, so I popped in some of the earlier ones that worked, and they still played fine. So the heads were no worse off then when I started. Well, at least not enough to notice. But no amount of tweaking the bad tapes seems to change the quality. They are unwatchable.

At any rate, I am afraid to work with the bad tapes anymore, just in case there is a risk of damaging them further.

Thanks for the tips.
 
It's just lack of oxide, as it's flaked off. You certainly can't be held accountable for time and errosion. Just leave the top off and give it a lil canned air after each pass.
 
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