Unhappy cassette

[Martin Bush]

Hi all

I've just tried playing a pre recorded cassette. Its second hand but in good nick and claims to be 'Chrome". Its Basher, the best of Nick Lowe in case anyone wants to look it up.

From the off it sounded a bit wowwy. Theres a few bass runs and chords where it seemed to show most . So I thought it would fully gast forward then rewind it... it kept stopping.

My guess is that, at what looks like 65 mins a side, theres too much tape in the cassette for my personal stereo to handle. Although when I took the cassette out and tried to finger wind it did feel tight. A quick forward and back and it was ok again for a bit.

What do you think? Too much tape? A tight shell? Combination of the two? Sadly I cant open the shell as its sealed.

Martin

PS by contrast, I now have Peter Gabriel's first album on. The tape looks cheap (light colour) but it plays fine and sounds good. I think its what you might call a first pressing (paper labels etc).

[Nickthedentist]

Hello again Martin,

You might have success by transferring the tape into a shell from another cassette. Happy to help if you'd like.

N.

[Martin Bush]

Will give it some thought and will let you know. I'd like to try it in a full sized deck to see if it's an issue with the mech being underpowered. But a transplant might be the best option. Shame really as I'd like to keep it original but ultimately I'd like to play the music

I was wondering whether the spool of tape might be rubbing on the shell due to its size. Just a guess

[G6Tanuki]

In times-past I've managed to 'fix' this sort of problem by giving the cassette a healthy slap flat against my thigh [Ooerr Matron!] which helps settle the tape on the 'spools'.

It used to be a big problem with some computer-based datalogging gear I supported which did a lot of stop-start of the tape feed to record the data - one 'block' of data being recorded every couple of minutes. The resulting tension of winding was very non-uniform.

[Martin Bush]

I'm keen to play the tape but also understand what's happening which is partly why I want to hold off transplanting the tape for a while.

I tried a full wind in both directions and a bit of a shake too. I will try a slap later

[deswradio]

I think that transplanting may be a good idea. This has happened to me a few times with pre-recorded tapes where low-cost shells have been used. I used TDK cassettes (with screws so they could be disassembled and then assembled easily) as the recipient - no need to unwind the tape from the spools. I vaguely recall that some pre-recorded tapes had thin plastic sheets between the tape spools and the outer shell and it was those sheets rubbing against the spools that caused the problem.

Best wishes
Des

[Martin Bush]

I think you may be right about the plastic sheets, although I thought that was a standard feature.

[paulsherwin]

I agree with others that this is likely to be a cassette shell problem. The record companies didn't believe in wasting money on high end mechanics for their prerecorded cassettes and some of them are very basic indeed (waxed paper inlays, big foam pressure pads, no tape rollers, glued shells etc).

The Japanese blank manufacturers used very good mechanics from the very beginning, and a late 70s TDK D shell makes an excellent 'rescue shell' for a prerecorded cassette.

As it happens, I also enjoy Basher's stuff from the late 70s / early 80s. Apparently the nickname came from his tendency as a producer to bash out takes rather than spending weeks fine tuning them in the studio.

[emeritus]

I had this happen in the early 1970's with a batch of Philips C120 cassettes when they introduced their first low noise tapes. I ended up splitting apart the glued shells and, playing them back on my EL3302 with their tops removed in the manner of a reel-to-reel machine, copied them onto new blank cassettes.

[Richard_FM]

Cruel To Be Kind is one of his best songs, one I often play when I need an uplift.

[jamesperrett]

I've had this problem before with the cheaper Scotch (3M) cassettes which were usually in welded shells. The last time this happened I just transferred the tape to a new shell and all was fine.

And on the subject of Nick Lowe - I may have posted this before but I enjoyed watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuDvvVfOj1o

[Edward Huggins]

Originally Posted by Martin Bush

Hi all


My guess is that, at what looks like 65 mins a side, theres too much tape in the cassette for my personal stereo to handle. Although when I took the cassette out and tried to finger wind it did feel tight. A quick forward and back and it was ok again for a bit.

What do you think? Too much tape? A tight shell? Combination of the two? Sadly I cant open the shell as its sealed.

Martin

PS by contrast, I now have Peter Gabriel's first album on. The tape looks cheap (light colour) but it plays fine and sounds good. I think its what you might call a first pressing (paper labels etc).

At 65 mins a side - is this a C120 cassette?
If so, they were troublesome when new. If what you have is old, S/H and pre-recorded, then don't expect too much from it.....

[Martin Bush]

65 mins is my guess based on the minute indicators on the cassette itself. This is backed up by looking at the amount of tracks per side, but it would not play long enough for me to time it.

I get the point about pre recorded cassettes but I'd somehow hoped this one might be made of sterner stuff as its issued on one of the better reissue labels.

I suppose if they really wanted to issue a premium product they'd have made it a two cassette pack.

EDIT: its 27 tracks coming in at something short of 1hrs 20min. My observations were some way off. It still looks like a lot of tape in the shell but maybe I am more used to seeing 10 or 12 track albums.

[paulsherwin]

It's basically a C90.

You can't tell much by just looking at the tape spools through the shell window, as different tape thicknesses were used.

[Nickthedentist]

Somewhere I have a TDK D180 i.e. 90 mins per side, but C90 (2 x 45 mins) was the longest which was considered to be reliable and suited to portables, car use, answering machines and so on.

[paulsherwin]

C120s were indeed more fragile, but the main drawback was that the tape saturated more easily and had lower output levels. One effect of this was to cause Dolby mistracking.

C180s were even worse of course, which is why only a few manufacturers produced them, and then only in small quantities.

A few multispeed decks were produced which optionally ran at 15/16 ips. These sounded surprisingly good with high quality tape, but it never caught on as a standard.

[Martin Bush]

I used to have a Fostex multi-track recorder with a speed adjustment feature. I no longer have the machine, but guess what speed I recorded some of my home demos at?

I found the tapes recently but I have yet to work out how I could play them at the right speed (you need to hear the tape at correct speed to make sense of them to mix down really).

[Nickthedentist]

You could use Audacity on your PC to adjust the playback speed.

[Martin Bush]

I could, but they are four track recordings so I'd have to guess as to the mix. Can you play four channels/ tracks at once in Audacity? (mind you, I have Reaper so I could give it a go in that).

That said, they are not the Beatles lost recordings - they will probably be me trying to be weird or, more irritatingly, playing something quite good in a tuning I can't now remember!

[paulsherwin]

You could digitise each of the 4 tracks separately. This has the added advantage that you can mix down in the digital domain.