Hey guys!
I have a late 80's model hitatchi VCR that played fine but I decided to go ahead and clean the heads etc. anyway. After cleaning the heads with some 99% rubbing alcohol, the playback quality has become grainy. The tracking adjust knob doesn't do anything but make it worse than it already is. What's going on and what did I do wrong???:tears:

What other than the alcohol did you use to clean the heads with and how did you do it? Possibly you left something behind from your cleaning material snagged on one of the heads, or you may have done permanent damage. The actual heads are very tiny and fragile. They are made of ferrite and will break off like glass.

Nothing should be broken off. I just used the alcohol and some Q-tips. I took off the actual spinning head and I did find some cotton inside the head. I put it back on and now the picture is a total disaster. Arrrgh!!

Q-tips. There's the problem.
One should really use foam swabs just for video cleaning. The cotton will do just as you described: clog the tiny microscopic gap in the heads.

Just great. So I basically ruined the unit.:dammit:

It's not tracking at all anymore.

Nothing should be broken off. I just used the alcohol and some Q-tips. I took off the actual spinning head and I did find some cotton inside the head. I put it back on and now the picture is a total disaster. Arrrgh!!

Cotton Q-tips.. not a good idea in video heads. They snag on the heads and leave pieces of cotton strands, unless you're real careful and wind the cotton very tightly first, then only roll the tip back-and-forth over the individual heads. Sounds like it''s screwed. Unless... did you put the upper cylinder part back on the way it came off in the correct position, ands not 180° opposite?

Cotton fibers are like logs compared to the size of the video heads. Imagine trying to clean a wine glass by throwing tree branches at it.

best - use a cleaning tape cassette - or, a piece of microfiber cloth wetted with ethyl alcohol (or isopropyl). Some sites say you can use typing paper instead of microfiber. Hold the cloth or paper still and rotate the heads past it in the normal operating direction.

When we ran out of Sony head cleaner for our HDD-1000 digital high-def studio recorder, someone ran out and got a small bottle of Everclear brand 190 proof - worked like a charm.

Nothing worked. I put the head back on in the correct position. Nothing but flipping and squiggly lines all over the screen. I eventually got so mad and fed up, I threw the head at the machine. I cracked a PC board, so it's trash now.

The crazy thing is, about a month ago, I used a cleaning cassette on this machine and it totally screwed it up. I was able to get the picture back to normal by using Q-tips and some rubbing alcohol. A couple days ago, I started to notice some artifacts in the picture quality so I whipped out the Q-tips and the rubbing alcohol again thinking that would clean it up.

I use paper towels and Alcohol to clean the heads.

Put some Alcohol on the towel, hold it against the head and turn the head gently back and forth in full rotations, repeat till no more oxide is left on the towel (heads should only be cleaned across, never up and down) this usually does the trick.

I use paper towels and Alcohol to clean the heads.

Put some Alcohol on the towel, hold it against the head and turn the head gently back and forth in full rotations, repeat till no more oxide is left on the towel (heads should only be cleaned across, never up and down) this usually does the trick. Yep that works well, done it that way many times myself. As long as the paper towel is of good quality and very low lint like Bounty (no affiliation with P&G!)

The crazy thing is, about a month ago, I used a cleaning cassette on this machine and it totally screwed it up... What kind of "cleaning" cassette? I never found a wet type I liked. Seen many of those like Bib and Allsop snag and break off heads. Only ones I ever recommended to my customers were the dry-type Scotch and Fuji brands.

Yeah, it was a wet type cassette. BTW, can VCR heads be demagnetized like Audio tape heads?

BTW, can VCR heads be demagnetized like Audio tape heads?
No I've never done it to video heads, the cylinder is non-magnetic as well as the tape guides. I suppose it's possible the audio-control track head might get slightly magnetized. If you record on it, I would think the record currents in the video, full-erase, audio and control track heads should take care of any slight residual magnetism.

It might be too late now, but try to do it like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccjt5C4NJKY

I have often brought a seemingly dead VHS machine, and Beta, too, with clogged heads back to life by simply playing a new VHS or Beta tape at the slowest speed from beginning to end. Sometimes, it doesent work, but I have had good luck more often than not.

Since tape is obsolete now, I imagine it will be really hard to find new tapes in the future.

I've only thrown something one time. I was working on my car, when I stripped out a bolt that essentially stopped the car in its tracks. I was furious, and slung the wrench and socket... It went through a window and landed outside in leaves...burying itself. I NEEDED that wrench and socket, so I spent hours looking for it, after I replaced the window. My dad watched all this, and never said a word, until I found the wrench and replaced the bolt. Then, he says to me: I bet you dont throw another wrench, will you?

Only for the brave. Many a VHS I have rescued by using alcohol on my fingertip and rubbing gently and vertically across the head gap. It may take several tries. Make sure the drum is dry before you spin it up with a tape. This is usually done after the Q-tip attempt.

In my 2" quad days we did the same fingertip trick on the spinning head using liquid Freon out of a gallon container. If it was bad, you would use your fingernail against the spinning heads. Anyone remember this? Al Gore is looking for me.

We had a pint sized squirt bottle of freon beside the RCA TR-7's at my first job in TV. When a clog occurred, I'd squirt a shot of freon across the spinning heads. I miss those 2 machines. We got a trio of Ampex VR-5000's that gave far-less trouble.

Just before I left TV, I screened all the 2" commercial spots on an older Ampex machine. I also had to work loading a never-satisfied computer in the same room... green screen monitor... I hated it, and left happily. I can still hear the heads screaming in my ears to this day!!