Ben Nguyen wrote:

I have a regular audio cassette, the kind that goes into your car's
regular cassette deck. Its an audio book that was purchased a few years
ago, and I was hoping I could try to salvage it digitally.
Since it was obviously some manufacturing problem, I tried contacting the
maker but they have not responded.

This can be one of two problems:

1. bad head height on the cassette duplicator.

2. bad head height on the duplication master.

Almost certainly if you crank the head height on your cassette deck up
and down (and you may need to tweak azimuth in the process), you will
be able to get it to play properly. Be sure to realign the deck with
a reference tape after this process.

If not, it's a duplication master issue and you're screwed. But this is
much less likely.

I wouldnt mind tinkering with a spare cassette deck if it might do the trick,
but Im not sure whats involved.

Depends on the deck, but they should all have adjustments for head height
and azimuth, although on the cheaper decks they interact a lot.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."