Folks,

I can’t thank you all enough for your thorough and very helpful suggestions about dealing with cassette tapes. I am reassured that old cassettes generally have fewer problems than RTR tapes of the same vintage. It seems like having a playback deck with an azimuth adjustment and some empty shells available to rehouse troublesome tapes are the most important. My primary deck is a portable Sony D5M which I used for years as my main deck for field recording, and have generally used it to play back tapes I have recorded. I also have another Sony deck in my studio. But I am entirely open to investing in one of the Nakamichi decks that have been suggested for both the dual capstan and azimuth adjustment. 

Thanks again for all your good counsel!

Best,
Dan

Dan Gediman
[log in to unmask]
502.299.2565

> On Jun 3, 2018, at 12:00 AM, ARSCLIST automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> There is 1 message totaling 19 lines in this issue.
> 
> Topics of the day:
> 
>  1. Question about baking cassette audio tapes
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Date:    Sat, 2 Jun 2018 00:28:11 -0400
> From:    Jeff Willens <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Question about baking cassette audio tapes
> 
> What Peter said. 
> 
> There are a very few brands of cassettes that do indeed shed, and can benefit from a limited amount of baking time. I’m dealing with several boxes of them right now. But before doing that, I would check to see if rehousing them in new shells would help first. These tapes did not squeal. They just flat out didn’t move. Some needed a better tape path. Some needed baking. But itis generally less common than for RTR tapes.
> 
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> End of ARSCLIST Digest - 1 Jun 2018 to 2 Jun 2018 (#2018-116)
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