I have 3 cassette players

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

notta one of them will spin the tape!

dang technology

…currently trying to digitize an 84-year old man’s rock band from the 80s and pick my favorites for his next CD

found a friend on facebook to borrow a tape deck from for the short term

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#2

There are tiny rubber belts inside that do the spinning work. They are probably worn out / dried out or broken. Some stuff can be serviced, or you can try to DIY, if you’re confident in your skillz.

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#3

Is the cassette easy to turn by hand ? Like put a pen in one of the sprockets and turn it with your fingers. ( Always turn it to take up slack from the other side. ) It should move pretty freely. If not figure out what is preventing the cassette from moving freely, perhaps opening the cassette itself eventually and maybe winding it in a new cassette holder. I’ve had situations, usually when things got old/dirty/sticky and the machines would refuse to turn a tape.

Do your machines work with other tapes ?

ADDED : If the tape does not move easily with your fingers, DO NOT FORCE IT ! Figure out why it is sticking.

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#4

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=techmoan+cassette+player+repair

I like his repair videos. Lots of cassette players. Lots of infos about cassette and cassette players.

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#5

one time, for this same elder gent’, i bought some thrift store cassettes to move his reels to their new housing

that was my first attempt at that and it worked out.

i’ll try to sort these machines i’ve got now but for the meantime i’ll be able to use the borrowed player for this project

…just sucks that one of my broken machines is a tascam 4-track and one of the others is a marantz tape thing like johnny depp wore as hunter s. thompson in ‘fear and loathing in las vegas’ after the adrenachrome trip

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#6

Always fun with a miscellaneous old tape to figure out settings to properly pick up the signals, and then if and what noise reduction might have been used in the recording ( Dolby etc. ), because who wrote that sort of thing down, and who kept things consistent between separate tracks ?

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