Rust on tape heads

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 pzachary(a)sasquatch.com wrote: Yup - to re-iterate, I have successfully recovered large audio heads ouch!) by using a strip of cleaned linen to which has been applied a *very light* paste of mineral oil and jeweller's rouge - or, as mentioned, some other exceedingly fine grit abrasive powder. This is then 'seesawed' very gently across the pole faces in the same direction the tape travels In cinema audio work, where the heads were typically 30MM tall and have lapping them, we typically used a short continuous loop of some crap mag stock, which would run for an hour or two, to 'condition' the head and lap it in to it's final shape - using the natural abrasiveness of the media itself to finish the job. But none of this is for the faint-of-heart - ya gotta go slow and think about what is being done, all in terms of a knowledge of the physics and mechanics of tape-recording head technology. No matter what the signal or the number of tracks, the mechanical aspects remain the same for all classes of static-head machines. And most certainly you are dead-on about first taking the decision as what the ultimate end is - is this for a museum? Hobby machine? Critical application? Cheers John