The owners manual for my new car says that I must clean the cassette
player head and roller after every 30 hours of use,

OR it can become too dirty to clean!!!! Is that true?

The car is from 2004 and i'm guessing it's never had its cassette drive
cleaned, but it plays fine. May i wait another 13 years?

Cleaning the heads is more dependent upon the quality of the tapes than anything else. At this point, I would use a "WET" cleaner if available. You take the chance of disturbing what little dirt that is there as well. Be careful. If you have any doubt, remove the unit from the vehicle and have a pro clean it. There is a good chance that the belts are nearing their end of life too. These can be changed and the pinch roller can be treated to get it back to normal too.

Dan

On Saturday, 22 July 2017 20:53:25 UTC+1, micky wrote:
The owners manual for my new car says that I must clean the cassette
player head and roller after every 30 hours of use,

OR it can become too dirty to clean!!!! Is that true?

The car is from 2004 and i'm guessing it's never had its cassette drive
cleaned, but it plays fine. May i wait another 13 years?

Alcohol & cotton bud. head & whatsit first, rubber roller last. Drying properly is necessary. You can neglect it but sound quality will really suffer.


NT

a cleaning tape (cassette)


a écrit :
Cleaning the heads is more dependent upon the quality of the tapes than anything else. At this point, I would use a "WET" cleaner if available. You take the chance of disturbing what little dirt that is there as well. Be careful. If you have any doubt, remove the unit from the vehicle and have a pro clean it. There is a good chance that the belts are nearing their end of life too. These can be changed and the pinch roller can be treated to get it back to normal too.

Dan

micky wrote:

-----------------------


The owners manual for my new car says that I must clean the cassette
player head and roller after every 30 hours of use,

OR it can become too dirty to clean!!!! Is that true?

The car is from 2004 and i'm guessing it's never had its cassette drive
cleaned, but it plays fine. May i wait another 13 years?



** Got the tiniest idea what happens if you never clean the pinch roller??

Obviously not.

...... Phil

On Sunday, 23 July 2017 08:32:55 UTC+1, Look165 wrote:
a écrit :

Cleaning the heads is more dependent upon the quality of the tapes than anything else. At this point, I would use a "WET" cleaner if available. You take the chance of disturbing what little dirt that is there as well. Be careful. If you have any doubt, remove the unit from the vehicle and have a pro clean it. There is a good chance that the belts are nearing their end of life too. These can be changed and the pinch roller can be treated to get it back to normal too.

Dan

a cleaning tape (cassette)

is as much use as tits on a bull.

wrote in message
...
On Sunday, 23 July 2017 08:32:55 UTC+1, Look165 wrote:
a écrit :

Cleaning the heads is more dependent upon the quality of the tapes than
anything else. At this point, I would use a "WET" cleaner if
available. You take the chance of disturbing what little dirt that is
there as well. Be careful. If you have any doubt, remove the unit
from the vehicle and have a pro clean it. There is a good chance that
the belts are nearing their end of life too. These can be changed and
the pinch roller can be treated to get it back to normal too.

Dan

a cleaning tape (cassette)

is as much use as tits on a bull.

Abrasive to the head and doesn't shift anything off the roller.

Far better to open it and clean with a suitable solvent on a cotton bud.

The usual danger with muck build up, is the tape sticks to the capstan and
winds around it. destroys the tape and doesn't do the deck much good either.

wrote in message
...
On Saturday, 22 July 2017 20:53:25 UTC+1, micky wrote:
The owners manual for my new car says that I must clean the cassette
player head and roller after every 30 hours of use,

OR it can become too dirty to clean!!!! Is that true?

The car is from 2004 and i'm guessing it's never had its cassette drive
cleaned, but it plays fine. May i wait another 13 years?

Alcohol & cotton bud. head & whatsit first, rubber roller last. Drying
properly is necessary. You can neglect it but sound quality will really
suffer.

And by the time you can get at it with a cotton bud - you can also see
whether you did any good or not.

"** Got the tiniest idea what happens if you never clean the pinch roller??

Obviously not. "

The worst part is that the pinch roller is on the oxide side of the tape. Older VCRs were like that but they fixed it by using an elevator gear and dropping the pinch roller to the inside. There is no practical way to do this with an audio cassette.

Actually eight tracks were better in that respect, though the pinch roller was included in the cassette. Actually, some of them did not use rubber ones, they just made them out of plastic and they played fine. Actually they could outperform cassettes as they had double the tape speed. But there were other limitations, like no rewind.

To clean a pinch roller I usually used something abrasive, like a paint scuffing pad. Like the idler wheel in a turntable, if you make it a bit smaller it does not change the speed. In the case of a turntable it is the diameter of the motor shaft, in a tape deck it is a matter of the capstan diameter. Just don't make it small enough that it does not engage.

Oe main thing to keep the wow and flutter down is to make it even. If it is uneven you got problems. I almost always had the deck running when I cleaned the pinch roller, let it turn. I did the same with VCRs by using a dummy tape.

Anyway, older car cassette decks can be a real PITA. You might just want to get one of those fake cassettes that you plug something in to, like an MP3 player or something. Very few car cassette players were better than a 160 K MP3, if any. Or there are those FM modulators that just transmit to the FM, nut those are limited to 15 KHz. But do you really care when you are driving across Texas ? I doubt it.

On Tuesday, 25 July 2017 01:07:33 UTC+1, wrote:
"** Got the tiniest idea what happens if you never clean the pinch roller??

Obviously not. "

The worst part is that the pinch roller is on the oxide side of the tape. Older VCRs were like that but they fixed it by using an elevator gear and dropping the pinch roller to the inside. There is no practical way to do this with an audio cassette.

Actually eight tracks were better in that respect, though the pinch roller was included in the cassette. Actually, some of them did not use rubber ones, they just made them out of plastic and they played fine. Actually they could outperform cassettes as they had double the tape speed. But there were other limitations, like no rewind.

To clean a pinch roller I usually used something abrasive, like a paint scuffing pad. Like the idler wheel in a turntable, if you make it a bit smaller it does not change the speed. In the case of a turntable it is the diameter of the motor shaft, in a tape deck it is a matter of the capstan diameter. Just don't make it small enough that it does not engage.

Oe main thing to keep the wow and flutter down is to make it even. If it is uneven you got problems. I almost always had the deck running when I cleaned the pinch roller, let it turn. I did the same with VCRs by using a dummy tape.

Anyway, older car cassette decks can be a real PITA. You might just want to get one of those fake cassettes that you plug something in to, like an MP3 player or something. Very few car cassette players were better than a 160 K MP3, if any. Or there are those FM modulators that just transmit to the FM, nut those are limited to 15 KHz. But do you really care when you are driving across Texas ? I doubt it.

8 tracks were overtaken by cassettes, but continued in use. What finished them off was how badly they ended up slipping. The system they used to ensure even tape transport was really not ok.


NT