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.
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....
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.