Is this a joke ? What good would this do ??

[cjacek]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...744662787&rd=1

[The Ghost of FM]

It might be of use for cleaning off tapes that were kept in a dusty environment or for removing any general dirt and grime that may have settled on your tape but, I would really careful of how much pressure that thing was applying to the tape as it could screw up the action of your tensioner arms if set up improperly!

At least it's not a 500 dollar knob!

Cheers!

[MadAudio]

Feh. A waste of money, IMO. It reminds me of a little of the tape cleaners that were on the cassette loop bin units where I used to work, but since they were using really cheap tape stock it was a necessity. For good tape on a pro deck it's really not necessary.

[Rokket]

Originally Posted by MadAudio

Feh. A waste of money, IMO. It reminds me of a little of the tape cleaners that were on the cassette loop bin units where I used to work, but since they were using really cheap tape stock it was a necessity. For good tape on a pro deck it's really not necessary.

I agree. If you use bargain bin tapes, you are taking your chances with not only sound quality, but really clogging your heads. And do you want the little circle this thing's suction cup is going to leave on your machine?

[Beck]

Not a bad concept, but I'm not sure about this particular device. Suction cups never stick unless you're trying to remove one.

All tapes shed to some degree. This looks like an attempt to grab loose oxides before they contaminate the tape path.

Something like this (modified a bit) could be handy in the sticky shed recovery process. After I bake a tape I run it through my machine in FFW while gently holding a lint-free cloth against the tape on the supply reel side. The cloth is full of oxide after the process and only then will I use the tape on the machine. Otherwise I would be cleaning all that crap off the heads. Even though baking fixes the sticky problem, there is still usually a lot of loose oxide left behind.

However, this little item in its current form wouldn't have enough surface area to catch all the orphaned particles.

I completely agree that a device like this would throw off the delicate tension system during normal play/record modes. So at best this could be used for an occasional "tape wash."

There are professional tape cleaners out there that cost an arm & a leg. So the general concept of cleaning the tape has been around for a while, but they are separate machines just for cleaning.

[cjacek]

The only reason I thought this as a laughable little gadget is that the seller claims: "This will definitely help keep your machine cleaner,and save wear on the heads and rollers." But based on your replies and my own "take" on the situation is that it's nothing more than to possibly clean the tapes off of excessive oxide. This in turn would probably keep everything cleaner but at the same time if you've got shed to the point of contemplating using a "tape cleaner" then you shouldn't be using bad tape anyway. I think this is a way of some fellow cashing in on the open reel market and providing misleading info.

Thanks for your replies guys!

Daniel