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In Reply to: RE: Can a spliced cassette tape ruin a deck? posted by vinyltapecd on June 23, 2009 at 14:09:37
Regarding your thread title question: "Can a spliced cassette tape ruin a deck?", it's extremely unlikely. But if you used household adhesive tape, you might have a somewhat more laborious cleaning job than normal.
Moving on to related issues...
Bill Thomas' post is quite good, and filled with excellent advice. Great job, Bill!
I would add that typical household adhesive tape is excessively "gummy" for this application. That's why God invented splicing tape. Household adhesive tape, under stretching pressure, doesn't behave well. It allows the two adjoined items to migrate away from each other, and therefore exposes adhesive to other objects.
Also, such tapes undergo something of a life cycle, from good adherence and minimal gumminess for very new (and appropriate) applications, to no adherence and no gumminess for very old applications. The gumminess issue tends to arise somewhere in between, as the adhesive ages.
Splicing tape typically is designed to avoid the gumminess and migration issues, but, as with all types of products, some are better than others. I always used 3M splicing tape, and in over 35 years, have only had two, count 'em, two, splices fail.
wrt to other posts in this thread, some folks also have some good advice, although there's also a bit of not-so-good advice. To simplify a response to them, I've lumped them all here in a "Message" and "Comment" format, for your consideration.
Inmate51
Message: It's true that if you peel your tape splice off you may lose some material. There is a lot of music material on the slow moving cassette(per inch).
Comment: Although the splicing tape isn't on the oxide side of the recording tape, there is the possibility that pulling it off may cause the end of the recording tape to curl a bit, so the resulting new splice won't be entirely flat. Tha will cause a loss of level and HF output.
Message: If you used the Magic Brand Scotch tape a few yrs ago, I'd say go for it. Then if it works feel victorious, but flog yourself right after that.;-)
Comment: 100% agree.
Message: I've got a hunch that 2 year old Scotch tape will be OK.
Comment: Agreed. Apart from a little possible oozing, it's likely to hold just fine. Clean your transport after playing it.
Message: If it was spliced with ordinary household tape, then you should manually go through the tape and redo the splices with proper splicing tape and a proper splicing block.
Comment: I can't agree with this in this case. For a 2-year old splice, you are likely to cause more damage than leaving it alone.
Message: If the tape is truly valuable, I would have the deck checked out by an expert and adjusted.
Comment: Overkill. If your deck isn't exhibiting any transport or playback signal issues, save your money.
Message: I would try a number of other tapes and transfer these to computer and make sure that you have the process down correctly, including level settings that are appropriate for tapes of the type in question.
Comment: Excellent advice.
Message: Old tapes may have loose oxide and this sheds. Hence the first playing may be better than a subsequent one. You want to have this first playing properly recorded in the computer.
Comment: I partly agree. However, if it becomes obvious that oxide is shedding dramatically, stop the tape immediately. Oxide build-up on heads will significantly reduce the playback fidelity, and there is no point in playing the remainder of a valuable tape, which is shedding and losing stored signal information, when there isn't good tape-to-head contact.
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