Hello,
I read some topic about cleaning moldy VHS tapes...As I bought a dozen of moldy tapes, I would like to know if I can use MUSTANG VR 9600 (a VHS cassette rewinder and cleaner) as tape cleaner, instead of playing the tape and cleaning it with a microfiber cloth.
Is baking the tapes still suggested?
Regards
R.

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Hi,
I would like to share my manual cleaning machine: I use two markers to rotate the tapes and clean the tape with swab and isopropyl alcohol (99.9%).
The first round is not so bad, but I did it twice (forward and backward) to get a better result.
It took a huge amount of time, but for a single tape (with a low duration) is feasable.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/imag...8/8zh4t0-1.jpg

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. :)

However, I bought a low cost VCR to clean the rest of the tapes. :)

Goodwill is your friend here, $9 VCRs at my location. Not good for playing, but good for unusual projects like this, or simply tearing apart a VCR to learn about them more. Most you find are total POS models from Funai from the late 2000s.

Unfortunatelly, I paid about $33 (30 euros). I did not find anything for less. :(

But the VCR is good enough to play as well, so I can used it for capturing vidoes from these tapes and avoid to spread remaining spores on good hardware.
I put cassetes and VCR on a separate box with anti mold for wardrobe. Maybe it helps.

Some cassettes are also broken, better do not use good VCR. I will post some pictures in the next days.

I guess you clean also the inside of the reels, any tricks for that ?
baking tapes is only done when tapes are sticky i thought.... the bind material is cause of this, it normaly should only stick the pigment to each other, to the tape substrate, and making a smooth surface the "lubricant" is allready gone by aging or playing time.

It would be helpful if you could post a short clip of your manual cleaning process on Youtube and share link here :-)

When it's August, due to hot weather, it's time for analogic and vintage things.
I cleaned the reels with isopropyl alcohol, q-tip then remove all cotton with microfibre cloth.
However, you can also remove the tape as the tape is removable and cleaned the reels with something more aggressive and expose them to sunlight (UV rays) for 4-5 hours. Reels are not fragile.
Obviously, you do not clean the plastic parts everyday: so if you do it once/twice it's safe.

i guess next question is: what is mold ? :)
I just googled for it, comes down to cleaning the tape through a fast rewind in an open vcr with a cotton tip, and cleaning the case, maybe not in that order... but mold is something that forms on organic material, i guess that's mostly the bonding material... that's also when tapes are sticky, though.... the mold is mostly present on the edge of the tape, so its dust that was accumilated in de cassette that got humid.
Dust being cloth/carpet fibers, that are all around us or nicotine residu from smoke in the space where it was stored.

Oh no. :laugh:

It's the Lordsmurf again :)