How to Clean Inside a VCR

As with any appliance in your home, dust and dirt will build-up inside your VCR over time. Don't think that just because the mechanical pieces inside are protected by a case that dust can't work its way inside to coat the components. Especially sensitive are the VCR heads that are responsible for reading the magnetic encoding on the VCR tapes and turning that code into picture and sound. Dust can harm your VCR and with enough build-up, can prevent it from working altogether. At the very least, too much dust can compromise the clarity of special projects, such as copying VCR tapes to DVD. The inside of your VCR and the VCR heads are easier to clean than you might think, and cleaning them is essential to keeping your VCR in top working condition.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Dust cloth
• Can of compressed air
• Head-cleaning cassette or unused cassette tape
• Rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs

1. Unplug your VCR.

2. Clean the outside of the VCR so that any dust or dirt coating the outside does not find its way back inside the machine.

3. Push the cover of the cassette bay inward with your fingers as if you were inserting a cassette. Hold the bay open.

4. Insert the nozzle of a can of compressed air into the cassette bay and fire the compressed air into the unit. This will loosen and blast away the dust and dirt that is coating the general interior of the VCR.

5. Clean the VCR heads. There are different ways to clean them, but the easiest and most common is to use a commercial cleaning cassette. This is a cassette that is designed to clean the heads with cleaning fluid. Simply insert the cleaning cassette into the VCR as you would a tape cassette and press "Play." The cleaning cassette will do the rest.

6. An alternative to the commercial cleaner is to use a new, blank cassette tape. Insert the new, blank cassette into the VCR and press "Play." Allow the tape to play from beginning to end and the heads will be cleansed in the process. It is also possible to clean the heads manually by removing the outer cover of the VCR and gently rubbing the heads with alcohol-soaked cotton swabs.

Tips & Warnings

• Manually cleaning video heads can be dangerous if you aren't familiar with the internal components of the device. Do some research first and refer to your owner's manual to make sure you have correctly identified the proper areas you need to touch with the cotton swab. Be careful not to touch the cotton swab to any component other than the video heads.
• Be careful to hold the can of compressed air upright when firing. Twisting the can at too much of an angle or holding it upside down will cause it to fire as a liquid chlorofluorocarbon (most commonly recognized by the brand name Freon) instead of pressurized air.