I have a Mitsu DVHS. Can this be cleaned with a regular VHS head cleaner or is there a special cleaner for these? Any help appreciated.

I've seen a cleaner DVHS on ebay though I haven't bought it or used the one I have for a normal VHS VCR but I would think the normal VHS one would work just fine.

Cleaning cassettes are never good.

Best way to clean the heads is with alcohol and cleaningswabs (no cotton!)

Cleaning cassettes will wear your heads out early.

So take the top off of the machine and clean manually?

A wet based cleaning cassette will not damage a VCR's heads unless you use it excessively, and manual cleaning would do the same amount of damage if done excessively too. Heads only need to be cleaned when showing clear signs of being dirty - no regular cleaning is necessary since, unless you use bad tape, since the tapes themselves provide a cleaning action. So, unless every tape plays with snow in the image or the VCR has been sitting unused in a dusty environment, you don't need to worry about cleaning, and then a wet type tape will work fine. Manual cleaning is super risky if you don't have the right chamos swabs and know how to do it.

This machine probably has less than 50 hours on it. Picture is superb although every once in awhile I'll put a tape in and there will be a flicker at the top of the screen that will not go away. I have then put the same tape in another VCR and it played fine. Don't know why this is, it happens maybe 1 out of 20 tapes. Other than that it's been a really good VCR. I haven't done any recording although I've thought about recording a few SVHS tapes for fun. Are SVHS blank tapes a special formulation or can I use any blank VHS and achieve the same result?

disclord, did you get the PM I sent you about the Beta/tv unit on ebay last week? I read one of your posts awhile back and you had stated an interest.

The flicker sounds like flagging. That's not because of dirty head. Dirty heads will look like snow. If your getting flaggin try a DVD recorder used as a pass thru device.

Flagging can be due to uneven tension in the loading mech, a stretched tape, any number of things - but not dirty heads. And if a VHS or S-VHS tape is recorded at any speed other than the SP mode, all bets are off because SP is the only mode that JVC guaranteed full interchange compatibility.

D-VHS tapes are like super high grade S-VHS tapes with very low drop out counts, which is required due to the slow tape speed and density of digital data on D-VHS recordings. Unlike ED-Beta or Betacam SP, they are not metal tapes, thus ensuring analog recording/playback compatibility with all Non D-VHS units. D-VHS recorders heads are made of Sendust, giving them excellent wear resistance.

Yes, I did and I thank you for the link - I just wish I could have afforded to have it shipped to me - I'd love to own that first Betamax/TV combo.

I was told chamois leather is fine and a little liquid tape cleaner on it and gentle place the chamois leather against the head and use the other hand to make small back and forward rotations around the heads and you'll see small little dark lines on the chamois leather that has removed the dirt.

You can do it that way and the info you were told was correct, but one minor vertical movement of the chamois and the head is a goner. A wet cleaning tape is much, much easier to use and much, much safer and simply does not damage the heads - my family owned a video rental store from 1982 until 1987 and we were involved with a repair shop called The Audio Clinic - the thing the repair techs always said was that the non-tape based cleaners were great for their business because the slightest wrong move will snap the head off - a wet cleaning tape gets the job done without problems - nor is cleaning really needed unless you live in a dusty area or play worn old ex-rental tapes. We always had the latest release playing on a TV when you entered the store and we never had to clean the heads - its an urban legend that tape,based VCR head cleaners wear or damage the VcR heads, even in a Betamax where the tape is always threaded against the heads.

Maxell's wet head cleaning tape is great and low cost. Ther brushless lens cleaner for CD/DVD/BD players is also amazing, creating a tornado-like vortex that sucks the dirt off the lens without any physical contact - I used it in my DVL-700 too and it did a great job. I just wish there was a DVD based version to clean the 700's DVD lens.

Anyway, I've had a JVC HRS-9800u since 2002 and it still gets about 4 hours of play a week and I've NEVER had to clean the heads. I've had to use a wet cleaner in my industrial Sony GCS-50 Super High-Band BIs deck once when I played an ex rental tape I bought on eBay - one of the DA-4 heads clogged so recording and playback was fine but FX didn't work. The Allsop wet cleaning tape fixed the problem with no problems - to clean the tape I let it Ff through an older Sony SL-10 EZ-Beta unit - the heads clogged so bad that it took 3 seperate passes of the cleaning tape to clear the heads, but it did and the tape no longer contaminated my industrial deck.