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How often does the sound head need cleaning? I use FilmGuard on my films and figure that it should help to clean and protect the head also.

Like you, when I clean the projector path, I clean the sound heads with either FilmGuard or Film Renew. Denatured alcohol is good for cleaning sounds heads too.

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What Dan didn't mention is that alcohol should only be used on exposed sound heads. A lot of projectors through the 70's had enclosed heads that connot be cleaned without some dissasembly. Exposed magnetic sound heads on Elmo's or Japanese projectors like Canon, Minolta's can be cleaned with denatured alcohol simply by using a Q-tip. Closed sound heads are something I've even had problems with on Eumig Dual 8 sound projectors and with GAF projectors. Once something get's caught in there I don't even know what to do but never put denatured alcohol on a film and try to run it. There's a huge possibility that you'll ruin the sound striping.

I go through my Elmo projection paths every time I use the machines with a flashlight and an artists brush. I had a speck of tape get lodged in there once which fatally gouged a brand new print and put one of my favorite machines on the sidelines for a while, so I'm a little paranoid about what's lurking in there now. I still have a little Neumade Xecote left which I lube the paths every so often too.

What I also do roughly once a month is demagnetize the heads. I can't honestly say I can hear a difference, but it's easy to do so why not?!

The Eumig 800 series heads are disassembleable (is that a word?) for cleaning, but it's a minor pain in the butt. What I'm happy to say is every time I've done it I was pretty impressed with how clean they were inside even after many hours of operation.

Wow, I didn't know you had ti disassemble Eumig heads to clean them. i use Elmos 99% of the time.

That's sound advice.

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They are fully enclosed, but it's possible to remove them from the machine and take off the head's cover. It's probably about 20 minutes of taking apart and putting back together so it's not a weekly thing.

The critical thing is to remove only the crews for the cover: there are other screws on the head that control the alignment and it would be disastrous to get them out of whack!

Before I found out how to do this I actually sidelined my Eumig because I had no idea what might be lurking in there, but after I opened it up I found little to nothing to clean. Considering I had the machine for years by then I was pretty impressed.

Steve,

What type of Eumig do you have? Mine is one of the 900 series and was wondering if all are much the same with the heads.

My Eumig is a Bolex SP-80 Special, which is basically a Super-8 only Eumig 810 with a different upper cover and paint job. Bolex wanted to sell to the Super-8 market, but stick to 16mm for their own production, so they sold rebadged Eumigs for many years.

I believe the 900 Series Eumigs have different heads, but the principle could still apply.

Steve brought up demagnetizing the heads; while I do not do it monthly as he does, I DO make it a point to fire up the demagnetizer at least every six months and give it a few passes over the sound head. It DOES make a positive difference in sound quality. (I use a Radio Shack demagnetizer I bought back in the 70s for my reel to reel and cassette decks.)

I do it kind of like using Dental Floss: somebody told me it was the right thing to do so I do it!

One possible consideration: When I first built the circuit I have between my projectors and my stereo I wasn't happy with the magnetic hiss that came through. I started looking into the frequency response of audio in motion pictures and found out about the "academy curve". This puts a pretty severe restriction on frequencies above 8 kHz, so I did the same and killed the hiss.

-by the same token the audible benefit of demagnetizing the heads is better high frequency response, so I may be killing this benefit off in the name of getting rid of the hiss.

I'm still happier not exposing my soundtracks to magnetized surfaces anyway!