Topic: Time to have my heads cleaned?

[shackaholic]

Lately I've been noticing on certain transfers of mine that I'm hearing minor spats of static in 30 second intervals. Like I'll have one at 14:53 and another one at 16:23. Would this be indicative of dirty heads?

I'd clean them myself but I admittedly don't have doctor's hands and am afraid of damaging things, so maybe I'll just send it to Pro-Digital or something.

[shackaholic]

Oh, and I should say that there are definitely a lot of hours on this deck (Sony R500). It was used when it was loaned to me and since then I've transferred a number of DATs on it, some of them older than 10 years....

[guysonic]

Four motor R500 is most reliable to read problem tapes, and has 20K hour life in most cases.  Might be a problem with a certain batch of tapes (look for uneven or wrinkled tape) and/or the deck the tapes were originally recorded on.  Also, head alignment on different recorders can vary enough to cause problems with playback.