Maxell 290038 Wet Premium VHS Tape Cleaner

J. Edward Vance: We bought this a few years ago to update our old home videos before it was too late. It was very easy to do and we're happy with the results!

Canada on Apr 12, 2021

Dave Cain: These are an extremely good tape cleaner. Hard to come by now.

Canada on Jul 01, 2018

Cindy B.: This is true: I was gonna take my VCR/DVD player into the shop, because it suddenly wouldn't play any VCR's or tape them either! I tape almost everything I watch, to view later at night or in my camper van which has a TV/VCR in it. I camp all the time, at trailheads, campgrounds and ski areas! This was the 2nd time this occurred... playing just fine one day, and the very next time you turn it on, nothing but black and gray snow! I didn't think it could be a cleaning problem, because I'd used my "dry" head cleaner on it several times without success. But it turns out that the "wet" type cleaner is much better, and it cleans more components inside the VCR than the dry one does. Just before taking it to the repair shop :($70.00+!), I received this cleaner from Amazon and gave it a try.... BINGO! Perfect picture again! And no problems whatsoever since.
IF YOU'RE A "DINOSAUR" LIKE ME (WHO STILL USES VCR'S), you should know this: "older" tapes tend to get "soft" and leave much more residue on the tape heads than newer tapes do. And if this happens, the picture will TOTALLY and INSTANTLY go out, not just degrade slowly over time. Finding this out was a real eye-opener for me. So now,...

United States on Oct 10, 2017

LasLas: This has to be one of the best head cleaners I've ever owned. We've been working for a while to digitize old VHS home videos -- many of which are in dire condition.Since the tapes are so dirty the VCR heads have been getting doubly so.We had tried all the normal "DIY" fixes like Qtips and rubbing alcohol/etc and it just wasn't working out.The quality of our transfers got abysmal and then completely dirty.

Then along came this little gem..
After the first use of this system there was a noticeable difference.. IE: It actually had a picture again.
After the second use the picture quality was better than everything we had encoded prior.
This epic head cleaner actually made the heads in a 40 year old VCR work better than the heads that were in a 10 year old VCR with only 2 uses. Needless to say, I was quite impressed.

I've had head cleaners in the past, but normally they stop working after 10 uses. That was just the way things went in the 90s.. Clean VCR.. tape gets dirty.. Cleaning becomes less effective.. Buy new cleaner.. repeat. We've ran this thing well over 30 times and it still works just as good as when we first unboxed it.

Over the course of the...

United States on Mar 06, 2016

Michael S Ables: I purchased this Maxell VP-200 VHS Wet Cleaner for my father, one of only two people I know that still uses a VCR. When he inserted it into the VCR it was immediately ejected and would not operate. So, I tracked down another VCR user (the second one I now know) and was eventually able to test this unit with their VCR with the same outcome. Once done, I contacted Jim's Warehouse through Amazon and was told that they only accept exchanges for 30 days and that I was just past that point. They were, however, gracious enough to offer me a refund of 67 cents. I admit that I did not accept their offer. I do, however, have a few suggestions for ways in which Jim's Warehouse may be slightly less offensive to its customers in the future:
1. Tell the customer that they are just too stupid to use the device. That's less offensive than offering a $0.67 refund.
2. Slam the phone, hanging up on the customer, then call them back just to hang up on them again. That's less offensive than offering a 7.65 South African Rand refund.
3. Speak to them in an exaggerated, overstated caricature of their local accent (in my case, Texan). That's less offensive than offering a 41.47 Indian Rupee...

United States on Feb 25, 2015

R. House: I ran this wet cleaning tape through my one VCR many times. The Picture did Improve. Videos that I thought were damaged and needed to be thrown out started working properly. We had tapes that would constantly loose colour going black and white and while in black in white there was no sound this happened so often the movies were unwatchable.

But I kept looking at the tape which started off as white. After running it through the VCR the tape started getting this Black stuff on it. I emailed Maxell and find out if this stuff would replant on the video heads if I continued to use it and they said yes and that I should get a new one. so after about 6 uses in a week the tape was thrown in the Garbage. I kept the Cleaner. I will probably buy another one of these tapes. Since it did save my Hollywood movies from going in the trash.

Canada on May 11, 2013

Patti Nyman: It seems to work well, but it doesn't play for a straight 20 seconds as is recommended. It seems to get stuck and stop after 2-3 seconds, so I just keep playing it for this short time over and over and it seems to do the trick.

Canada on Dec 04, 2012

Susanna Gillam: The wet tape cleaner enabled us to view our old VHS tapes. We had been trying to find a tape cleaner for several months so were glad to find this one on Amazon. Delivery of the product occurred within the week.

Canada on Oct 22, 2012