Non-Destructive Detection of Drop Out by a Measurement Tape/Head Contact Condition

With the recent increases in recording density of VCRs, tape/head interface problems have become much more immediate. Magnetic recording characteristics such as dropout are greatly affected by dust and by microscopic irregularities or protrusions on the tape surface. In this paper, we report on the non-destructive detection of dropout using a system which measures the state of tape/head contact. Experiments have shown that stretching of the tape/head spacing was several hundred times the height of protrusions, and that the coefficient of the record/playback spacing loss was 100 dB.