At 09:51 AM 2010-05-13, Karl Fitzke wrote some really neat and useful stuff that I won't repeat: Hi, Karl. That was wonderful. Thanks! I learned to do manual DAT-head cleaning about ten years ago. I had put a machine on the shelf and bought another when I thought the first machine was dead, but it turned out that I had a bad batch of DAT tapes that shed like crazy--perhaps even sticky-shed. They were TDK. At the time, it was apparently known. I switched to first KAO and then Maxell DDS tapes (rather than audio DATs) for my own recording and never had a problem. While some say that DAT works well and is robust, I still think we should transfer our DATs before our open reels, everything else being equal. I'd much rather fix an open reel machine than a DAT. Cheers, Richard 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.