Would you purchase this DVD Recorder?



Quote:
Originally Posted by tomwil  /t/1416484/would-you-purchase-this-dvd-recorder#post_22150016


For some reason, I thought tape heads could be magnetized. I guess from the older days when they used to sell tape head demagnetizers for cassette decks.

Good to know!

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Yeah I remember the audio head demagnetizers back in the day. I think the theory was that if you had a three-head deck (erase-rec-play) that over time the playback head would accumulate tiny magnetic tape particles. In my opinion this could only happen with three-head decks and only to the playback head as the erase and record heads should degauss themselves when in rec mode. As to VCRs they don’t have dedicated “play” heads. -2 flying rec/play SP, -2 flying rec/play EP, -1 flying erase, -2 flying rec/play HF, 1 stationary erase, 1 stationary rec/play audio/ct. All those heads should degauss themselves when in rec mode. All above info is only my opinion as I remember it.


All that said, even an unshielded speaker magnet in a consumer center speaker near any tape deck will not magnetize any heads, not even dedicated playback heads in a cassette deck. That’s my opinion. Now as for the weight of the speaker on top of that deck? Hmmm that IMO could be damaging to any moving parts, alignment or heat dispersing issues…

Yes but with people stacking gear I see a lot of complaints of VHS mis-tracking and the blame going to cheap, weak VHS mechanisms when in fact I bet stacking is to blame. I also see cases when laser burn-out is blamed when in fact laser mis-tracking is happening and the laser is strong otherwise – again laser-mis-tracking in certain cases can be caused due to stacking, slight flex bending of the chassis and causing chaos with moving parts and causing misalignment. I personally witnessed VHS guide pins not engaging properly which could be due to slight chassis flex bending due to stacking. I had a guide pin not engage properly but in my case I suspect a tight tape that was packaged and shipped improperly. After putting that tape in that guide pin would not properly engage even with good tapes until I gently pushed it back in place. I saw disk-tray problems, which to me seemed to be caused by stacking. Especially stacking not at edges - if you take a look at that center speaker, notice that it’s not sitting on the edges of the deck but more towards the center were slight bending can happen and cause misalignment problems with moving parts. I bet in some cases lack of proper heat dispersion is to blame for failed lasers and other parts.


Not telling anyone not to stack. Just saying why you won’t catch me stacking and why my flimsy built VHS decks still track like new and why my DVD laser is burning strong even after exclusively using 16x discs all these years.