Hi, Jeff and Mike,

I'd be very curious to know what you find with these cassettes as I'm 
looking at the SM cassettes as a possible solution to some playback 
issues (using these instead of generic C-0 cassettes for playing 
challenging tapes).

Please see if you can isolate the mechanism that is causing the 
squeal which is, as far as I know, stick-slip of the tape against 
something stationary. For example, I'd be interested if removing the 
supply side arm cures it while removing the takeup side arm doesn't 
(which I suspect).

As to 3M175, please see the next issue of ARSC Journal for my paper, 
or I can provide a copy of the earlier AES preprint if you wish.

Cheers,

Richard

At 11:31 AM 2008-07-02, Mike Hirst wrote:
>Jeff,
>
>Your absolutely right. They do have arms inside the shell, just as 
>you describe. I am currently working my way through 900+hrs of oral 
>history recordings, most of which are recorded on cassettes. Next 
>time I come across the same problem I'll try removing the arms and 
>see what happens. Thanks for the tip.
>
>Best wishes
>
>Mike
>
>Jeff Willens wrote:
>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't those BASF cassettes have those 
>>plastic arms inside the shell that fed the tape away from the 
>>reels? I seem to recall many years ago that when those tapes of 
>>mine were squealing, I removed the arms, and the problem largely went away.
>>As for 175 tape, I've yet to come across that problem. Is it 
>>possible that it only applied to a certain time period within its 
>>production life?

Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.