GETTING MORE TALE #519: Mistakes I Made Fixing Broken Tapes
I used to play cassette tapes almost exclusively. Even when I had started growing a CD collection, my cassettes dominated. Why? They were portable. I could record a CD or LP on them, put them in my Walkman, or play them in the car. I didn’t have a good way of doing that with CDs. Plus, you could record a CD to a good quality blank tape, and make a better copy than if you bought it on a pre-recorded manufactured release.
But tapes break. They wear. They get old. There were ways of fixing them, which I sometimes screwed up gloriously. What mistakes did I make?
MISTAKE #1: Dirty hands
You shouldn’t even try to fix a tape with dirty hands. Any time I opened one up to splice or carefully wind the tape on the spools, I was touching them with my unclean, ungloved hands. This deposited dirt and oil on the tape, deteriorating the sound and then transferring that dirt and oil to my tape heads.
MISTAKE #2: Magnetized screwdriver
Here’s another no-brainer that I missed. I had a cool little screwdriver that was magnetized. It was hard to lose those little screws with one of those, since they stuck to the screwdriver. Brilliant way to keep all those little screws from disappearing, but not good for tapes!
I wondered why a lot of my tapes had drop-outs in the sound. Many could have been caused by my favourite screwdriver while trying to fix them. This is common sense but I didn’t think my little screwdriver could possibly do any harm!
MISTAKE #3: Incorrect reassembly
Putting the tape back together is sometimes harder than it looks. Small parts pop out and sometimes it’s tricky to get them back in correctly. The slip sheet – a little piece of plastic inside the tape shell – helps reduce friction and squeal, but only if you put it back in with the slippery side facing the tape spool. When hastily reassembling tapes, I sometimes put the sheet in the wrong way causing slowdowns and noise.
Another critical part is the pressure pad. This applies light pressure on the tape to keep it against the player’s tape head. These pieces were tiny and sometimes popped out of place. There were some tapes I put back together with this piece improperly inserted. The lack of pressure on the tape reduced the sound quality greatly.
MISTAKE #4: Splicing with Scotch tape
I spliced successfully with Scotch tape…but only in the short term. As the Scotch tape ages, the stickiness reduces and becomes slimy. This means in time and with a few plays, a careful splice would break. You don’t want to get any of that stinky gunk in your tape deck, so use proper splicing tape. They used to sell it commonly at places like Radio Shack, but I came from a cheap family that used whatever was available. Hence my tapes were spliced with Scotch.
MISTAKE #5: Butter fingers
It’s tricky getting all the tape wound around the right spools and ready to screw back together. Sometimes – quite often actually – I would struggle with this and inevitably crunch the tape between parts of the shell. Once you crunch or crease the magnetic tape, you’re going to hear an audio problem.
I didn’t wreck every tape that I tried to fix, but I did make these mistakes periodically. No wonder my tapes sounded like crap.
All those years, all those cassettes I owned… never once did I ever take one apart. Never had to do so, honestly. I still have some of the tapes I owned as a kid, and they’ll play the same today as they did then!
Still, cool post!
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You should grab a few from the junk store and take them apart. You haven’t lived!
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I used to have problems with buttery fingers too. Then I switched to margarine.
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I find the problem persists no matter which topping you choose!
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I never fixed one. If it was broke it was broke.
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They could have been saved! Do you have any left to try on?
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No. I’ve moved house that many times in my life its probably all gone by now. When I really got into collecting music and maintaining it, it was CDs all the way. Time moves slower in Ireland but not that slow.
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Never tried to fix one and I don’t have any left in my collection. All converted to CDs or digital now. I never would have thought to fix them. I missed out.
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It was fun. I enjoyed it even if I was doing it wrong a lot of fun time. I also sometimes trimmed out excess tape so I wouldn’t have to fast forward between sides.
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That is really smart!!!!!
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When I did it right, it worked great! I could also use excess tape for an EP if I had a spare tape shell.
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I had quite a few tapes break over the years and I was able to save a good number of those despite my suspect motor skills. Unfortunately, a good number of those would break again, sometimes a few years later but they would.
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Tbone was the cassette tape guru as i was the vinyl guy…..your post has given me an idea for a future post! Good Job Fella….
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CASSETTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now you’re speaking my language.
I love her butter fingers can not touch my cassettes.
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I had to open up a few cassettes, but the fix was only ever temporary (pretty much never the same again, so I would replace if it was an album or note what was on the tape and make again).
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Very recently I dug out Ozzy’s Speak Of The Devil cassette. I’ve had it for about 30 years now. You can’t read the songs on it anymore. I wore that mother out through the years and it still plays. Unreal. I’ve since transferred it to digital. Cause ya never know.
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Hey Metal Ed! That was one of my favourite tapes. I got it right at the end of highschool as I was starting to explore Black Sabbath more.
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