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For Expert Village, I'm Kurt, chief engineer at KGB Studios. We're continuing our series
on how to restore a 4-track reel-to-reel tape machine. And continuing on, this is actually
a path on the left hand side. Followed by that, right in the middle of the screen and
then it goes across. I'm just panning straight across the path as it goes up into the take-up
reel. So that's the tape path. Now we're going to go back and show you how to clean these
two heads in the next section. O.K. These are the Q-tips that we will use for cleaning
the heads. So we'll grab those right now as we go through and we show you how to clean
a 4-track reel-to-reel head. This fluid, this special type of head fluid that we'll use
and of course our trusty Q-tips. That's what we're going to use right now as we clean this.
O.K., so, remember the one that's in the center of your screen will be the one. So we'll dab
that into the cleaner, the head cleaner at this point. Swab it down just a little bit
and then we're going to swipe it across the head. There are some good rules to follow
in terms of cleaning the head because you're going to need to practice good motion going
across the face of the head face. As you see me doing right here. I like to go up and down
and then I'll go across the face of the heads as well. The reason you do that with a cotton
swab, is you will use good cleaning technique and you're going to actually see, as you can
see here. You'll see the little bit of an oxide that's accumulating on the cotton there.
Now you don't want to use a lot of pressure. You just want to use a good series of strokes
and of course eyeball it really well to clean it up and we'll do that. O.K. now this is
also a playback/record head and I tend to clean it both ways here on this one. You can
see that there's a little bit of a sheath covering of it. So you definitely want to
go up and down on that to clean that, as well as the pressure rollers, which is what I'm
cleaning right now. And I go up and down on that one. Once you're satisfied with the cleaning
process. That's the process to which you actually clean the heads. And that one is the record
head and you can see here very clearly that we have some residual from the head. I also
clean these little sections here for the guides. Make sure they are free from oxide as well.
Believe it or not, you can actually tell quite readily when this head or the other tape record
head is distorted.