| Home recording and general music post from the archived Yabb Recording Website Message Board. Some of the info here may be outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good. Note: The only tags I made and attempt to convert are italics, bold, center and underline. So if you see some gibberish surrounded by brackets, just ignore it.
Recording Website Archived Yabb board Post
Febuary 2001 Yabb Message Board Archive
Subject: demagnetizing
by noname | 05/12/01 at 09:44:11
does anyone have any addresses explaining how to use one of those wand type demagenetizers, the instructions that came with it r terible and i dont want to ruin my 4 track.
also, i heard that demagnetizing isnt even necessary for some machines. is this true?
thankkies ;D
Subject: Re: demagnetizing
by Haywire | 05/12/01 at 13:43:19
First off, make sure that you have no tapes lying around in the immediate vicinity of you wand. You don't want to ruin them w/ yer de-mag. Turn yer 4-trk. off and unplug it to be safe. Move your wand very close to the heads, without touching them. Just move it slowly around the heads and the rest of the compartment (pins, rollers, etc) for a few seconds and that should do it. I used to use a cassette-shaped demagnetizer from Radio Shack that seemed to work well. But the wands work fine.You don't need (or want)to touch the heads and risk scratching anything.
Subject: Re: demagnetizing
by db | 05/12/01 at 13:43:26
Ok,
(1) turn the unit off, better yet, unplug it.
(2) Do not bring the wand near any meters, tapes, video's, tv's, monitors, watches or floppy's.
(3) Clean heads and tape guides.
(4) Do not touch any metal part of the recorder with the wand.
IF the wand has a switch, great, if not be near an outlet to be able to plug in/out the wand.
Turn on the wand 2 feet away from the recorder.
slowly bring the wand in and close to a head. Bring it very close but do not touch, wave it slowly in an up and down manor a few times top to bottom over the center of the head. Then pull the wand back very slowly at least 2 feet before turning off, or unplugging.
Repeat with each head and tape guide.
Hope this helps,
--db
PS: Haywire got me by 7 seconds
Subject: Re: demagnetizing
by Jon_B | 05/12/01 at 14:54:37
Use db's method for the wand type degausser- a word of caution: If you turn it on or off when it is too close to the tape heads, I believe you can ruin them.
Subject: Re: demagnetizing
by Silent_Bob | 05/12/01 at 23:38:30
Those discriptions are pretty good but you should be at least 2 meters away when you turn the wand on and at least 4 meters away when you turn it off. Move VERY SLOWLY!. You should move about 1 foot per second while you're approaching and move maybe 1" per second when you're in the tape path. Most of all be carefull. If you accidentally turn the wand off or pull the plug when you're near the machine, you can permanantly damage the deck. Now, some decks need degaussing more than others but all of them need it at one time or an other. Once every 10-15 hours of use is a good rule of thumb.
Subject: Re: demagnetizing
by noname | 05/13/01 at 06:18:00
thanks guys, thats great. 8)