[videochas www.locoworks.com]

Many decades ago I subscribed to the Time Life "Giants of Jazz"
series. Every month or so a box would arrive with two cassettes and a
well-researched and cogently-written book about some classic artist.
Sidney Buchet and Bix Biderbeke are just two examples of the artists
in this series. Great effort was taken to make the recordings sound
as good as possible, considering that they were ancient even then.

Now, rescued from storage, the casettes will play for a while, then
stall. The tape is brown shiny back, and is not shedding emulsion. I
tried slapping the cassette on the table to loosen it, but that was
not much help. I cannot exercise the tape in FF and RW because it
stalls after a few seconds.

I have twenty-six cassettes in this condition and would appreciate any
help in restoring them to playing condition. Can you help?

[mcp6453[_2_]]

On 1/28/2012 8:01 PM, videochas www.locoworks.com wrote:
Many decades ago I subscribed to the Time Life "Giants of Jazz"
series. Every month or so a box would arrive with two cassettes and a
well-researched and cogently-written book about some classic artist.
Sidney Buchet and Bix Biderbeke are just two examples of the artists
in this series. Great effort was taken to make the recordings sound
as good as possible, considering that they were ancient even then.

Now, rescued from storage, the cassettes will play for a while, then
stall. The tape is brown shiny back, and is not shedding emulsion. I
tried slapping the cassette on the table to loosen it, but that was
not much help. I cannot exercise the tape in FF and RW because it
stalls after a few seconds.

I have twenty-six cassettes in this condition and would appreciate any
help in restoring them to playing condition. Can you help?

You will probably need to transfer the reels to new shells. Then, try playing
them in a professional deck, like a Nakamichi Dragon. (My Dragon just arrived
yesterday. I haven't even taken it out of the box yet.)

[Mark]

I have twenty-six cassettes in this condition and would appreciate any
help in restoring them to playing condition. *Can you help?


um...is the problem with the tapes or with the machine?

try the tapes in another machine?

try other tapes in the machine?

an old machine may have deteriorated rubber belts that slip

Mark

[Edi Zubovic]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:01:33 -0800 (PST), "videochas
www.locoworks.com" wrote:

Many decades ago I subscribed to the Time Life "Giants of Jazz"
series. Every month or so a box would arrive with two cassettes and a
well-researched and cogently-written book about some classic artist.
Sidney Buchet and Bix Biderbeke are just two examples of the artists
in this series. Great effort was taken to make the recordings sound
as good as possible, considering that they were ancient even then.

Now, rescued from storage, the casettes will play for a while, then
stall. The tape is brown shiny back, and is not shedding emulsion. I
tried slapping the cassette on the table to loosen it, but that was
not much help. I cannot exercise the tape in FF and RW because it
stalls after a few seconds.

I have twenty-six cassettes in this condition and would appreciate any
help in restoring them to playing condition. Can you help?


-- If all the cassettes show the same behaviour, it is well possible
that there's a problem in the tape deck and not in the cassettes. But
if your tape deck is playing other, newer tapes OK, then indeed it
could be a bad batch of tapes. As Mark pointed out, you might try to
repack the tapes in new shells. You could do it one at a time (if
you'd like to keep original shells) or you could purchase replacement
shell packs such as this,

http://www.tracertek.com/tape-restoration-and-repair

(Empty Cassette Tape Shells) and do repacking. I would however pick
the most recent good shell out of all cassettes I have and use it
temporarily for transfer. The pictured shells are classics and over
the time there were improvements both in mechanics and materials of
shells.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

PS. I've found a program which acts kind of "software Dragon" for
azimuth correction as it seems it changes azimuth error values during
the learning phase. It is called "Advanced Audio Corrector". However,
the program is about a decade old and no working homepage exists now.
The most recent version is 2.1 (2001). The author is Dmitry Sknarev.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

[Scott Dorsey]

videochas www.locoworks.com wrote:

Now, rescued from storage, the casettes will play for a while, then
stall. The tape is brown shiny back, and is not shedding emulsion. I
tried slapping the cassette on the table to loosen it, but that was
not much help. I cannot exercise the tape in FF and RW because it
stalls after a few seconds.

Sounds like time for new belts and pinch rollers for the machine.

You might be able to transplant the cassettes into new shells if there
is shell damage, which would be my second guess.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On 2012-01-29 (ScottDorsey) said:
Sounds like time for new belts and pinch rollers for the machine.

That possibility had occurred to me, but the op didn't tell
us whether or not other cassettes play fine in the machine
iirc. IF so then your second guess would be mine as well,
time for transplanting the tape into new shells.




Richard webb,

replace anything before at with elspider

[videochas www.locoworks.com]

On Jan 29, 11:19*am, wrote:
On 2012-01-29 (ScottDorsey) said:
* *Sounds like time for new belts and pinch rollers for the machine.

That possibility had occurred to me, but the op didn't tell
us whether or not other cassettes play fine in the machine
iirc. *IF so then your second guess would be mine as well,
time for transplanting the tape into new shells.

Richard webb,

replace anything before at with elspider

Other cassettes play just fine. The "Giants of Jazz" cassettes are
glued together, not bolted or screwed. Any thoughts on how to open
them up to do a swap?

[polymod]

"videochas www.locoworks.com" wrote in message
...
On Jan 29, 11:19 am, wrote:
On 2012-01-29 (ScottDorsey) said:
Sounds like time for new belts and pinch rollers for the machine.

That possibility had occurred to me, but the op didn't tell
us whether or not other cassettes play fine in the machine
iirc. IF so then your second guess would be mine as well,
time for transplanting the tape into new shells.

Richard webb,

replace anything before at with elspider

Other cassettes play just fine. The "Giants of Jazz" cassettes are
glued together, not bolted or screwed. Any thoughts on how to open
them up to do a swap?

Can you manualy rewind/forward to the beginning/end (using a pencil thru the
hub)?

Poly

[Scott Dorsey]

videochas www.locoworks.com wrote:
On Jan 29, 11:19=A0am, wrote:
On 2012-01-29 (ScottDorsey) said:
=A0 =A0Sounds like time for new belts and pinch rollers for the machine.

That possibility had occurred to me, but the op didn't tell
us whether or not other cassettes play fine in the machine
iirc. =A0IF so then your second guess would be mine as well,
time for transplanting the tape into new shells.

Richard webb,

replace anything before at with elspider

Other cassettes play just fine. The "Giants of Jazz" cassettes are
glued together, not bolted or screwed. Any thoughts on how to open
them up to do a swap?

X-acto blade. Heat it up.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On 2012-01-30 (ScottDorsey) said:
videochas www.locoworks.com wrote:
Other cassettes play just fine. The "Giants of Jazz" cassettes are
glued together, not bolted or screwed. Any thoughts on how to open
them up to do a swap?
X-acto blade. Heat it up.

YEp, and, before you do that, get some empty shells, I"m
sure folks around this group can put you in touch with folks
that can still supply them, I used to use a place called
National Audio in MIssouri.

Replace the pressure pads and everything inside. I've got
more detailed hints and kins for the neophyte on doing this
somewhere around here iirc but I"d have to look.

A transplant of the tape in a new shell should solve your
problems.





Richard webb,

replace anything before at with elspider

[PStamler]

I always had the best luck with Maxell XLII cassettes -- they had
excellent shells, rollers, slip sheets and pressure pads. Buy a bunch
of them, open them up, remove and discard the blank tape, then open
up your bad cassettes and transplant the tape to the Maxell shell. Put
the shell back together, and you're good to go. Not the cheapest way
to do it by any means, but you get a very good result.

Peace,
Paul

[mcp6453[_2_]]

On 1/30/2012 3:38 PM, PStamler wrote:
I always had the best luck with Maxell XLII cassettes -- they had
excellent shells, rollers, slip sheets and pressure pads. Buy a bunch
of them, open them up, remove and discard the blank tape, then open
up your bad cassettes and transplant the tape to the Maxell shell. Put
the shell back together, and you're good to go. Not the cheapest way
to do it by any means, but you get a very good result.

By the way, if anyone on this list has one or two important cassette tapes they
want dubbed on a Nakamichi Dragon, I'll do them for free. Just send me an email.