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.