advice on JVC GRD53 fault

[Dale]

My JVC GRD53 camcorder has the [FONT=Arial Black]sound dropping out[/FONT]. It does this on recordings that used to sound OK. New recordings are worse. The picture quality is excellent. A friend's Sony can play back my old recordings and does better than the JVC on the new ones. [FONT=Arial Black]Can this be caused by a dirty head [/FONT] (does miniDV have separate video and sound heads?) or should I send it back for repair?

[MarkE19]

IMO even if it is a problem due to dirty heads the cam should still be sent back for repair if still fairly new and therefore still covered by the warenty.

You say old recordings are worse than new ones. Were these old recordings done on the same camcorder or another one?
Are all your tapes the same make & version? If not then this could be a cause of the problems if you have run several hours of tape movement on different tapes. Different coatings used by different companies when mixed can cause the heads of a miniDV cam to become clogged. A cleaning tape may help, but if too bad its a repir that will be needed.

Mark.

[Dale]

Mark

Thanks for the advice - all the recordings were done with the GRD53 on the same type of Panasonic tape. The machine has done about 10 hours of recording in total and about the same in play-back. (It has already been back for repair as it developed a small red splodge, visible in low-light conditions - I don't imagine the new problem is related but it suggests that mini-DV is not very robust -at least for JVC.) The machine is still under warranty but I had assumed that JVC would charge for a cleaning job. However, I don't want to start cleaning heads and risking damage(?) if it is unnecessary.

Do you happen to know if a dirty head can affect only sound?

Dale

[MarkE19]

With just 10 hours recording & playback I would say you should get the repair done under warenty! If not shout long & loud at them until they do the repair for free
MiniDV is not a robust format. The heads are very small and easily damaged or knocked out of alignment.
Have the dropouts occurred ever since the cam was returned from repair. If so then I would think that it is down to them. Even if not it could be caused by a lot of different things such as a dry solder joint etc which is a manufacturing fault.
Head cleaning tapes are the best way to clean DV heads and as long as you only use them once at a time, and only when needed should cause no damage.

Mark.