Tape Trail

Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

Use this form to submit comments directly to the Asylum moderators for this forum. We're particularly interested in truly outstanding posts that might be added to our FAQs.
You may also use this form to provide feedback or to call attention to messages that may be in violation of our content rules.

You must login to use this feature.

Inmate Login

By default, logging in will set a session cookie that disappears when you close your browser. Clicking on the 'Remember my Moniker & Password' below will cause a permanent 'Login Cookie' to be set.

Moniker/Username: The Name that you picked or by default, your email. Forgot Moniker?	Examples "Rapper", "Bob W", "joe@aol.com".
Password:	Forgot Password?
	Remember my Moniker & Password ( What's this?)

If you don't have an Asylum Account, you can create one by clicking Here.

Our privacy policy can be reviewed by clicking Here.

Inmate Comments

From:
Your Email:
Subject:

Message Comments

Original Message

Whats the lifespan of the cassette medium

Posted by Steelhead on March 10, 2017 at 10:14:42:
My experience is the opposite. I have cassettes that I recorded in the late 70's and early to mid 80's that play fine. I have a few pre-recorded and they have held up as well. Deck is a stock Nak ZX7 and I am the original owner and it works like the day I bought it. Everything works great on it and I thought it would have gone to CA to be refurbished by Willy by now but as long as everything works I just keep it in the mix. I use Maxell and TDK primarily and both have held up for the long haul.

My reel to reels have been like your experience with cassettes. Tape shedding, muddy (sorry-MUDDY playback). Everyone I tried just sounded horrible. I had a German press circa 1972 White Album that I put on reel to reel that was pristine and playing it back just hurt as I would have loved to keep that copy. I have a Teac X2000 into Sam at present and he said a problem I had was tape build up on the heads. I had cleaned them and tried to re-record a tape (ONE) before boxing it up for him. Just trying one tape gunked the heads (it does have other issues) and when it is fixed I am just going to dump my entire reel to reel as they are toast. Going to have to pony up for new ATR I guess.

I would have guessed that the reels would be good and the cassettes binding, squeaking, and full of drop outs and loss of fidelity. In my case I guessed wrong and my cassettes sound fine and my reels are toast.

Just my experience, Happy Spinning!