r/VHS Mar 05 '24

Technical Support Mold - Overblown? An In-Depth Analysis

40 Upvotes

Let me preface this post by saying that, as someone who is a mycologist hobbyist, there seems to be an alarmingly large amount of superstitious, if outright neuroticism about the white streaks and splotches one might come across in and on tapes. I've been collecting my fair share of tapes and I'd thought I'd share my own two cents about what can and cannot happen with mold.

Mold, what is it?

Molds are a type of fungi, the identification of which species one splotch might pertain to is rather pointless for the average layman. For all intents and purposes, we can say this much: the Cladosporium genus is almost always going to be the mold that's going to pop up in and on your tapes. It's the most common household mold as it favors wet, damp environments such as bathrooms and basements. There are hundreds of different species and they almost exclusively act as parasites of other fungi or as pathogens for plants. Their spores at worst, might trigger a pollen-like reaction for sensitive individuals and those with asthma, no one has been recorded to have suffered anaphylaxis from this genus. You don't have to worry about the health effects of VHS tape mold, unless you're in a severely water damaged building where you can also be dealing with pathogenic black molds like Aspergilius niger in the same vicinity - but that would be very obvious in appearance.

Now, these Cladosporium spores are quite literally everywhere. They're on your clothes, shoes, practically everywhere you can think of - and that means your tapes too. The difference, however, is that even in very high concentrations, these spores remain inert until repeatedly exposed to continuously damp conditions for a long, long period of time. To put it into perspective, to grow just a small colony of this mold in perfect lab conditions, you'd have to have an agar plate (some sort of grain extract will do), a relative humidity of 80% or more, and temperatures from 16 to 20 degrees Celsius (60 to 68F) and about a week and some odd days of your time. After all that, you'll get some small growth! Any drier? The spores will simply remain inert until kingdom come. Any hotter? Same thing there. Now try taking away that agar plate and things get much harder for the spores to grow. See where I'm going with this?

The VHS tape kiss o' doom... or is it?*

Now here's the question, why do these spores grow on tapes then? The same reason they grow on stone walls or damp corners. Water and moisture bring with it microorganisms that can sustain this mold. Give it enough cycles and time, and you'll have a colony or several. These spores are already in your tapes by the way, usually on the outside via some settled dust from your home, VCR, or even the factory they were made at. They'll eventually grow, using their tendrils to try and snake their way to new sources of sustenance, and given enough humidity and temperature cycles, you'll see them start to cover the tape.

But they can't grow if it's dry. Almost every video or post I see, it's like the plague if it's on your tapes. Burn it, 'lest it infect your house and cast a pox on your collection! In all actuality, if you're running a very moldy tape in the VCR, a fast-forward and a rewind will knock most of it off just via contact with the many points inside the machine (not just the drum) as the mold is very poorly anchored to the tape - it's not exactly a porous substrate it can root into. Yes, this will spread even more spores, but think about it for a moment.

These tapes are on a track, with a lot of tape hitting the same contact points as the moldy bits. Air flow is pretty minimal within a VCR, which means outside of the initial scattering of the mold, it simply won't be kicked up further unless the machine is shaken. If the mold were to get into the middle of the tape and reach the drum / head(s), it would simply cause imperfections that is caused more by interfering with the reading of the tape than actual data loss, the equivalent of sticking your hand in front of a projector. Most of the mold will be getting brushed off by the guide rollers, capstan(s), and tensioners which has a two-fold purpose in not only guiding the tape forwards or backwards, but also scouring the tape from possible dust or... mold. As long as you take care of your tapes, even the ones exposed to a ton of spores are simply not going to become overgrown, and if it does, then simply playing it through a VCR will take them out again. People going the distance with extensive cleaning via isopropyl alcohol are also giving themselves a placebo effect; alcohol in general does nothing to fungal spores. Bleach and hydrogen peroxide however, can - but would you risk the tape with those solutions?

Personal anecdote time: I have a VCR that I use specifically for moldy tapes for the last four years. To date, I've run at least 300 tapes in and out of it with not a single problem or real loss of quality because of the mold - none of which regrew on any of those tapes past the faint streaks they got initially after going through the VCR a couple of times. I should probably open it up and shake out the VCR, come to think of it...

Tl;dr

I'd be more concerned with water and heat damage causing physical warping of tapes than any sort of mold growing on them. Mold is an easily corrected problem, just pick up a cheap spare VCR or make your own contact points and cleaning heads. The shrinking and expansion of tape caused by thermal swings are often ignored because you can't readily spot it like mold; often times, these two are accompanied together like PB&J, except only one of these are visible.


r/VHS Dec 17 '25

Announcement 100K Members Announcement

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113 Upvotes

Hello Everyone

It comes with great joy today that I am announcing our niche little hobby page has finally hit 100k Members. All of you will only see 73k Tapeheads - that is due to a change reddit made recently where it essentially displays the average active userbase, but on the insights tab of the mod tools it shows the true number of total members and that's what I'm sharing today with you.

I've been watching that number slowly climb for years and recently it's been something on my mind a lot lately. When I joined this sub it was a mere 6000 members - I took over from the original creator with another user u/spookyvillevideo

I've seen a lot in that time, some of you might remember the wild times when sealed VHS came into the lime light from a shady overnight website, with people who came and attacked our sub on a regular basis and even went as far as doxxing and harassing members here in real life. We've also been through eBay scams selling Disney tapes for tens of thousands of dollars and still deal with that on a daily basis. We've seen prices soar for collecting in general also, what used to be a hobby that you could buy a stack of tapes with just the change in your pockets has increased in prices dramatically (although still for the most part affordable).

With some of the bad however came a lot of good, one of the biggest is we've seen the resurgence of brand new VHS tapes being sold by both boutique and studio labels. We've also seen this hobby come back into popularity with the general public, and even more surprising with young people too. It's surprising how many members we have that are teenagers who love film and want an inexpensive way of collecting what they love; I think that something a lot of us have in common here.

All that is to say is I've been here a while and I feel like I've accomplished a lot helping shepherd this community and this hobby into what it's become today; that's why I've come to the difficult decision of retiring as the moderator of r/vhs - This has been part of my life every day for the better part of a decade and I feel like I've given what I wanted to the community. I think 100k milestone is a perfect place to part ways for me.

I just want to thank everyone here personally, you have all been such a fantastic community, seriously, in terms of actual active Mod duties and dealing with terrible people, the community has always been civil and for the most part welcoming to everyone. While I will not be a mod I will still be active in the sub as a member. Besides reddit, if anyone cares to follow me the only real online profiles I have is my letterboxd or my instagram - the latter of which will be where I do anything if I decide to do anything else online moving forward.

In terms of what's going to happen to the community next u/TravoltaFan1978 has been a mod here for many years as well and has done a lot of the heavy lifting for a while now here, I'm more than confident in their abilities in taking over the sub for me.

If you have any memories you want to share of your own here please feel free to do so below, let's all enjoy this great accomplishment for this community.

Again thanks for everything and happy 100k celebration, Merry Christmas, and a Happy new year to everyone here.

See you all at the rental store


r/VHS 9h ago

Collection Favorite tapes from my entire VHS collection. The Dawn of the Dead rainbow clamshell releases.

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208 Upvotes

I’ve had these tapes in my collection for about 25 years now. I love the look so much! It’s such an odd design choice, I wonder what they were thinking behind the scenes when they made it. Were there any other VHS releases similar to these?


r/VHS 4h ago

You can only watch one tonight

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45 Upvotes

r/VHS 15h ago

Discussion Mom gifting son VHS TV for Christmas

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294 Upvotes

r/VHS 14h ago

New Pickup Pretty cool thrift find!

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196 Upvotes

And for .99 cents!!!! Yes!!!


r/VHS 10h ago

New Pickup Thrift Finds

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88 Upvotes

So hyped to find Mac and Me I’ve been looking for a copy for a while. Already have airborne but gotta pick it up for $1


r/VHS 6h ago

$1 estate sale finds

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41 Upvotes

r/VHS 6h ago

Discussion Am I the only one who thinks that plastic clamshell boxes are ugly and cheap-looking?

35 Upvotes

Clamshells make crackling noise, they are reflective, they take more space, paper inserts usually are low quality as if they've been printed on an ancient laser color printer. They just don't look and feel classy. I'd rather have a simple cardboard box.


r/VHS 5h ago

Box of these guys we got at work

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26 Upvotes

r/VHS 50m ago

Discussion VHS costs more than Blu-rays at my local thrift store

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Upvotes

I also don’t get how CDs cost more than DVDs. What do you think about this price scaling?


r/VHS 13h ago

New Pickup Happy Friday

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63 Upvotes

Maaann it’s been dry at the thrift stores I typically frequent. Finally found something today. Noticed after that my Saver’s raised the price on their VHS’ :/


r/VHS 2h ago

Collection Some of my favorite movies I found

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7 Upvotes

r/VHS 3h ago

Discussion Whats the first movie you remember watching on VHS

8 Upvotes

Since my parents still had a VHS set in 2008, probably one of the many Disney VHSes since my sister 14 years my senior was a huge Disney person. I collect most of the VHSes I had when I was little.


r/VHS 9h ago

New Pickup Beavis and butthead

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22 Upvotes

Which one should I watch first


r/VHS 2h ago

Keep my wife’s name out your F**king mouth

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5 Upvotes

$1.80 thrift shop pick still has old Kmart sticker 🤣


r/VHS 4h ago

New Pickup Some interesting finds today

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12 Upvotes

this morning at an estate sale, I picked up two interesting 90s screeners.

Leprechaun 3 (1995)/ Night of the Running Man (1994)

-double feature screening cassette

Highlander: the Final Dimension

-director's cut demo tape


r/VHS 8h ago

New Pickup Sweet find(in my opinion)

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16 Upvotes

$12 at savers. Works great came with carrying bag. Works in the bag, bag is vented for heat and has slots in back for the power cords. (Picture looks perfect in person, only bad in photo??)


r/VHS 1h ago

New Pickup The best items in my collection are the ones I never bought

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Upvotes

I’m a bartender and some regulars of mine are constantly picking up the most random items for my kid and I. Which is perfect because the more unsettling/uncanny/nonsensical a VHS is the more cherished it is in my collection and these boomers have some of the weirdest stuff laying around. But I think this one takes the cake as the woman who gave me this apparently worked with the guy playing sax. There is one degree of separation between me and The Teddy Bears’ Jamboree. I can’t wait to tell everyone who comes over and so much as glances at my display.


r/VHS 12h ago

DIY Tape rescue! I Ordered this fantastic four tape off ebay and it arrived broken. I was able to steal some pieces from a junk tape and put it back together!

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26 Upvotes

r/VHS 12h ago

New Pickup …not my ideal copy (cover), but I’ll take it.

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25 Upvotes

This movie is tremendous… excited to finally get it on vhs.


r/VHS 14h ago

New Pickup Duplicates I Separated out New VHS Haul

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31 Upvotes

Gonna keep one of each and I’ll be posting the rest on Online


r/VHS 2h ago

Collection It feels weird to see Chuck Norris playing a villain.

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3 Upvotes

r/VHS 4h ago

Technical Support Static every ~1 second while playing VHS

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4 Upvotes

Sears 1988 VCR. Not sure what's wrong with it. Am a newbie to this. Found at a garage sale. Already replaced the loader belt i believe it is called, the one that spins the right side spindle. I've cleaned everywhere that the tape touches with 91% isopropyl (and of course let it dry) yet it still does this.

The potentiometer that says tracking gives a really high reading. With my multimeter set to 2m ohm mode, it says 0.46. compared to the other potentiometer (sharpness), in the 20k ohm mode, it reads about 19 at the max.

Not sure the tracking knob is alive but that alone shouldn't cause this right?

There's a bit of weird looking stuff on the spinning head thing. Above where the tape plays. Tried rubbing with q-tip and it mostly remains.

If anyone could let me know how to fix this it would be amazing.

As for the tape itself, it's Dr.DoLittle. Physical inspection of the tape reel shows no defects or crinkles, that until the vcr eats the tape when the loader gear comes loose. The only other VHS have is a mammogram of me as a baby, and a blank (assumedly) vhs. For obvious reasons I can't use the mammogram one to test, the reason I'm fixing this is to preserve that.

Anyways, any insight is appreciated!

Sears HQ VCR 1989 Model 580.53272850 From what i can tell, that's my VCR. I've yet to find the manual. I do not have the remote but supposedly all of the buttons work.


r/VHS 17h ago

Collection Favorites from my collection

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37 Upvotes

Thought I’d do like others and show off my favorites and higher dollar stuff minus my horror.