"Unspam" wrote ...
[Veronica]

"Doc" wrote ...
What I was told by a video repair guy was that to clean
the heads, moisten the cloth in clear acetone,

Keep the acetone away from any of the plastic parts!
I wouldn't even trust it on the video head drum.

and lightly rub across the heads perpendicular to the axis of
the drum but never rub up and down, i.e. never rub parallel
to the axis of the drum.

The standard head/drum cleaning procedure. Alas many (most?)
consumers are not sensitive enough to the cautions to do this
without significant risk.


Use a cotton bud.

Actually, the "chamois-like" cleaning wands were created
specifically because "cotton bud"s (or cotton swabs, or
"Q-tips", a US brand-name) are SPECIFICALLY *NOT*
RECOMMENDED for cleaning rotary heads. The reason
being that the sharp little pieces that you are trying to clean
are quite likely to snag and retain cotton fibres which will
do more harm than whatever crud you were trying to remove.