I must be a bit younger than you. I remember the CD player lens cleaners. Those actually had brushes that made contact with the lens and did stuff sometimes.
Of course, a gentle hand and lint-free cloth will clean the lens, too. Probably better lol
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Not all cd players had an accessible lens. A car deck had a slot insert and there was no way to get at the lens without disassembling the whole thing.
Computer CD players also had a tray that extended so the lens was mostly hidden.
Boomboxes and portable CD players had pop up lids where you could see the lens, but there were probably an equal number of players where you couldn't access it.
An Amish boy on rumspringa decides that he wants to experience all that the English world has to offer, so he gets a date with a girl, and she suggests that he goes to the video store and gets them a porno to watch that night, before she takes his virginity.
Later that night he shows up at her apartment with a bottle of wine and a vhs. "What movie did you get us?" She asks,
Excitedly, he pulls out the vhs and says "this looks really sexy! It's called head cleaner!"
My older brother told me that joke as a kid. It was my first dirty joke. Lol
Sounds pretty clean actually
The other one from around that era was:
Wanna hear a clean joke? A girl took a bath with Bubbles.
Wanna hear a dirty joke? Bubbles was a clown.
You're supposed to sniff the liquid that came with em. Cleans your head.
Holy fuck that takes me back.
I'd wake up, wipe the blood from my nose, wait for my vision to return, then start huffing that magical juice all over again.
I hope you’re doing better these days
🫠
Also, that song fucking sucked!
🎵clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere 🎵
The duality
The recommended way of cleaning fixed heads, no matter if on a tape deck or on a floppy drive, is to just use a Q-tip with rubbing alcohol.
Helical-scan head drums like on any VCRs or any camcorders that used tape to record to, or on DAT decks and some data tape drives which used helical-scan formats like DAT/DDS or Data8/AIT, for example, are more delicate and have different recommendations for manual cleaning.
Do you have a favorite procedure for doing so? I got this old boombox (the kind you'd carry on your shoulder) but playing tapes on it sucks.
I want to try cleaning it, and was going to look into the head cleaner tapes.
The heads pick up dirt and over time the tapes shed on the play and record heads. It's a dark brown mass that builds up. The thicker it is, the more it interferes with record/playback. Playback will sound muffled with a loss in the high end. Also, the buildup promotes the tapes shedding more doing damage over time. It usually comes off easy with a few light wipes with an alcohol dipped q-tip.
The only "trick" I've heard is you are supposed to only wipe off the tape head the way the tape runs across it. The idea being you don't want to scratch the head which would then damage the tape. I don't know if this was just folklore, but it seems logical.
I used to have a reel to reel Tascam 8 track that ran 1/2 tape in my studio. I was always careful to wipe only in the direction of the tape and I'd clean before each studio session. I never saw any build up on those heads.
From what I've seen from other YTers, a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol on the heads seems fine, TDNC and most retro computing creators do that with floppy drives frequently to good success and the same idea applies to tape deck heads.
The hidden song at the end was awesome
Of man
Most blank tapes of that era had the 5 second lead-in, and that part of the tape was the same head cleaning material. I also never believed it worked and always cleaned the heads with an alcohol soaked cotton swab. Good ole days, mix tapes and mullets.