I have some homemade cassette tapes that were made about
20 to 30 years ago on a Radio Shack recorder.
The tapes haven't been played in about 20 years and
haven't been kept in any special storage.

Would like to transfer them to digital. Should I expect
any type changes to the tapes or the audio?

Also, I don't have a cassette player. What about the idea of just
getting a player at Radio Shack and transferring them through
the player's headphone out? My sound card has a breakout box
with "Phono" in so I don't think I'd need to get a line
level signal from the cassette player.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.
Any type of digital clean up or EQing that might be
recommended? (I do have a program for cleaning up
old record transfers but don't know if it would apply at
all for this.)