tape repair and restoration

Unspooled cassette tape in a bag as received by us

We often receive enquiries about audio and video tape that is not in the best condition having been stored in humid conditions, suffering from binder hydrolysis (sticky shed) or not wound on its reel well, but we were surprised when we received this tape recently.

It literally is a bag of tape! It is a cassette tape that had at some point become unspooled, probably when the cassette shell was opened for a repair. We can and did restore the tape by respooling and reshelling before playing on one of our Nakamichi dual capstan cassette decks.

This is a time consuming job though as thin tape twists, turns and crinkles up very easily needing careful tension, customised winding systems and protection from contaminants such as dust, grease, etc that could cause more damage to an already compromised recording.

2 comments

The Aural Retentive

I was looking for a picture of tape on the side of the road, unspooled and sad for my blog and found your picture of this tape. A) Great job saving it and B) Was it an old Motley Crue tape? LOL

Love the picture!

Michael

Hi Michael

Thanks for your comments..

Yes I don’t like seeing unspooled tape either – not that you see it much these days!
Unfortunately this bag of tape is still a bag of tape – the customer couldn’t justify paying for all the time it would have take to untangle and respool….

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