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Help! ZR 200 holding my tape hostage!
OK, I haven’t used my camcorder for quite some time and I don’t have a head-cleaner (didn’t know it was important until I started researching my current problem).
I can tape, record, playback just fine. I went to pop out the tape that’s in the camcorder to put in a new one for a new home video project, and though the tape carriage assembly comes up out of the bottom of the camcorder just fine, the tape compartment doesn’t pop open… my cassette is hostage!
I get a beeping warning, at which point I’m stuck. I can’t get the cassette out and I can’t get the carriage assembly to go back in (unless I remove and replace the battery, at which time the carriage retreats back into the camcorder).
I called Canon’s tech support and they suggested that this was most likely a problem resulting from dirty heads. Now I’ve cleaned my share of heads on conventional audio cassette decks (remember back before CD’s?), so I’m confident that I could do it manually and hopefully save myself the $$ from shipping and repair costs, if only I could get to the heads.
Short of submerging the whole camera in denatured alcohol (just kidding), is there any way that John Q. Public can get to the heads to clean them – so I can get my tape out – so that then I can buy a real head-cleaning kit?
Thank you for any help you can offer!
Tobias
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3 Replies
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Sounds like it is a tape transport mechanism problem and that you most likely will have to have it serviced.
– Don
https://noisybrain.com
https://www.bosfcpug.org -
OK. But short of taking a pair of tin-snips to the carriage, is there a means you could recommend for getting the current tape out? I’ve got an event this weekend that I’m supposed to tape, but I really want to save the tape that I’ve got in the camcorder right now. I’m not averse to a little screwdriver work, as long as it doesn’t take four thumbless left-hands to reassemble.
Thanks for any further help you can offer!
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Simply thwack it with an open palm on the side opposite the LCD. Fixed ours that way. It reseats the connectors on the tape transport.
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