Ricky W. Hunt wrote:

Warning. possibly stupid question. But has anybody ever rigged a playback
deck to play problem tapes pulled from their shell (shucked?) and play them
(without the shell)? Of course it would have limited uses but if you had a
batch of bad tapes it would seem easier to be able to pull them out and play
them (possibly for just digitizing and then scraping the originals) like
that than doing the case transfer. Just curious.

Yes. A government agency that I have worked with has an ATR-100 rigged
up with funny 1/8" guides and a funny head for this sort of thing. Although
they don't have a regular cassette head.

The problem is that the shell is part of the cassette system, and if you
take the tape out of the shell and put it into another shell, the azimuth
changes. Same if you put it on another transport.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."