View Single Post
Old 12th Feb 2019, 11:42 pm   #1
Cont3mplation
Triode
 
Join Date: Feb 2019
Location: Lerwick, Shetland, UK.
Posts: 17
Exclamation Can tape erasing with a magnet cause any permanent damage?

Hi all, brand new to the vintage hi-fi hobby, and recently started working more with cassette tapes. I purchased a good condition Alba DR-150 tape recorder and picked up a pack of 5 new type 1 cassettes to have a shot at recording some music from my pc. Despite having some issues with recording audio from my pc to the mic jack on the recorder. (Whenever audio peaked when volume was at certain levels the audio would die out and create an almost heartbeat effect?) I managed to tweak my volume settings enough that I got pretty clear sound onto the tapes. Having then heard that type 2 and 4 cassettes had less tape hiss and were generally of better quality I purchased a used type 4 metal cassette with a couple of albums copied onto it. On receiving it I copied the albums off and attempted to record silence over it as a starting point to recording my own music onto it. However this seemed to have no effect on the music and it still played back fine after being recorded onto. I eventually gave up, assuming perhaps my old recorder wasn't quite up to the job of metal cassettes and tried a trick id seen online of quickly running the tape past a neodymium magnet. I tried this and it worked a treat, the audio was cleared off instantly. On attempting to record though I got some intense crackling and audio fading in and out sounds at the start of the tape. I tried recording off a record turntable rather than my pc, and tried the middle of the tape. After some testing it worked seemingly okay, though I haven't been able to reproduce this successful recording. Is there any chance that running it over a magnet has permanently damaged the tape, or is it simply that this old recorder doesn't have the power required to work on metal tapes? (edit: having tested with type 1 again on the recorder this seems to work fine still)
Cont3mplation is offline