Showerthought: VHS Tape for Cassettes?

So while showering this morning I came up with a pretty weird question: Could VHS tape work for Music Cassettes as well? Basically both tape types are just plastic with CrO2 dusted onto them, only the way of saving data is different, so why wouldn't it work?

New CrO2 for Cassettes is pretty hard to come by today, but VHS tapes are available in quantities like 100 for 10 dollars, especially good quality BASF ones over here in Germany.

The only problem is to cut it down to fit a standard music cassette. Maybe there are ways already, and if not, if one could invent something to do so, our lack of "new" CrO2 tape could be over for a long time.

...or everything is just dreaming because it simply doesn't work that way. What do you think?

 

Probably is cheaper to buy an expensive audio cassette rather than trying to cut and size the VHS tape to fit into an audio cassette.
Another option is to record audio directly to VHS tape using VHS recorder but the quality of sound is not going to be as good as expected ( I am not sure).

 

I didn't mean that for personal use, but for businesses and companies who sell new cassettes made by them but are dependent on old CrO2-stock left over from big manufacturers like BASF, Fuji, TDK and so on. This stuff is going to run out one day, but VHS tapes are basically the same material, just in other dimensions. So maybe if a company sells large amounts of cassettes or specializes itself on making old VHS tapes available for cassette manufacturers to use, it may... and I mean may, be worth it. This could lower the prices for CrO2 cassettes drastically - a good thing for all of us.

 

Good question. I know that BASF used to make a big deal that their VHS tapes used Chrome tape. The standard audio track on VHS is linear so uses exactly the same format as a cassette. You would get a lot of audio cassettes from one VHS tape.

 

You got it, Longman!

So let's calculate: A standard BASF E-240 has about 500 m of tape according to common information. It is 12.7 mm wide while a compact cassette tape is only 3.81 mm wide. So we get about 3 cassette tapes from one VHS tape by wideness.

Now by length: We got the 500 m of VHS tape. A C90 cassette has about 130m of tape in it. Therefore we can make three perfect C90s from it.

Last point: Tape thickness. A C90 has 11.2 µm thick tape, a VHS 19 µm. Therefore it could get pretty crammed in there, so lets quickly calculate for a C60.

A C60 has around 18 µm of thickness, which would fit better. Its tape length is 85.73 m.

Therefore we could make about fiveteen (!) C60 tapes due to three times 3.81 mm in broadness and about five times in length. If we ignore the thickness, one E-240 also can be converted to nine C90s.

A lot tapes, or? I think this idea could be to game-changing for cassette enthusiasts to not think about it...

 

Now it just needs someone to work out how to cut the tape. I am pretty certain that tape is actually made in a very wide format and then cut down to whatever size is needed be in 2" for recording studios or 8mm for Camcorder Tapes.

In fact a quick Google confirms that in the 1950s they were starting out with 12" wide tape.

http://www.rfcafe.com/references/po...tape-is-made-feb-1955-popular-electronics.htm

So all that is needed is a "slitter operator" and presumably a slitter.

A very sharp blade in the tape path would cut lengthwise. The difficulty might be controlling the width.

The only thing that might be a problem is that the hubs in VHS tapes are a much larger diameter than in compact cassettes.
However, the tape goes round some quite sharp turns in a VHS M wrap mechanism so it might not be a problem.

Any AES members here ?

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=733

or get someone to do the job for you

http://www.metlon.com/custom.html

The started out cutting tapes "before Cassette sound recording tapes became popular"

 

Sound pretty good! You know what also sounds good? The chrome tape! I couldn't overcome my curiosity so I grabbed some snippets of BASF CrO2 VHS tape a friend had left and cut it with scissors. Of course it was far from perfect, but trying with a cheap cassette deck actually made it produce some pretty good tones - we are def onto something here.

And yeah, I also thought about using a slitter for this job, but why shouldn't you be able to adjust the blades to what you need? Anybody knows someone who has access to a slitter and can operate it?

 

Funny you should mention that: Before the introduction of DAT, Sony had developed a device that allowed recording/playback of audio as a encoded video signal when connected inline with a VCR. This was known as PCM recording, and resulted in a higher quality sound than CDs because of a higher sampling rate. (48Khz vs. 44.1Khz)
And, since it could easily be used with any VCR, this allowed users the creation of 8-10hr. tapes of CD quality music.
Here's an example of it:

You might recall seeing a flash of something like this on the wall of monitors in the music-video for "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits.

 

It was actually before the introduction of CD.

https://audiophilereview.com/cd-dac-digital/in-praise-of-the-sony-pcm-f1.html

During the development of CD they used Sonys D to A expertise and Philips optical knowhow from Laserdisk.

Later formats such as ADAT pushed SVHS to being a multitrack tool suitable for professional recording studios.

I read recently that Fujitsu were way ahead of Sony with PCM to tape but their system was purely for internal use.

Finally VHS Hi Fi is supposed to have very good audio specs. However none of the VCR based systems were pocket size.

 

This topic was discussed in another forum. If interesting.

http://rt20.mybb2.ru/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=93639

 

+walkman archive

I think so too, but my idea wasn't using VHS directly for audio but to use old CrO2 VHS tapes which are avaliable in large numbers cheap to produce "new" music cassettes. The lack of "new" cassette-ready CrO2 tape could be ended if we had a method of splitting VHS tape into standard music cassette tape sizes. As I calculated above, we are talking about a lot of tape here.

 

what about carefully cutting it while it's spooled? It may be easier than running it through a blade. I'd think that's how adhesive tape is cut from larger spools, but I haven't actually done the research.
I'm thinking something like pushing it through an ultra fine band-saw type blade while bracing it on the side opposite the cut to keep it uniform in width.

edit:

just started thinking after I posted that that it might be a good idea, if going that route, to add a couple wraps of polyimide (kapton) tape or similar to secure it. You'd want to have it fairly taught to avoid slippage while cutting; but I think this or a similar method could produce accurate, uniform, and fast results.

another edit:

I actually really want to try this now, and some local pawn shops sell vhs tapes for dirt cheap.
If I try this I'll post back with results.

 

Found an easy and reproduceable way to cut 3 perfect cassette tape tracks from a vhs tape. I'll make a post about it later but it basically involves 3-4 razor blades, a paper clip, and a stack of empty cassette tape spools.

 

That or record to DVD, like I have. The sound is exceptional and in the past few years, I've seen players the size of a Discman... used, at my local resale shop!

 

I'm thinking that you could maybe cut the spool using a hot foam wire cutter. Ill do some experimenting of my own.

 

sounds like it would damage the tape. the plastic that the magnetic particles are doped onto would probably curl from the heat

 

probably, though im curious as to how you split the vhs tape into 3.
ive made a diagram, something such as this?

 

Close, I actually just used the cassette reels to space the blades such that it would cut them at reel width and ran the tape from VHS spool to VHS spool with the cutter in line with the tape transport path.
I'm finding now, however, that 5 razor blades are needed, not 3, as the VHS tape width is actually slightly wider than 3 cassette tape tracks.
You also need to keep tension on the tape as it has a tendency to want to bow in a bit otherwise, and that widens it.

I'm going to buy a cheapo VHS player from a local thrift soon and try to make a simple automated system to do this.

In fact, you don't really have to open the VHS housing to do any of this, so it can be stored with the cut tracks untill you get around to spooling them into cassette shells.

Either way, I started asking about VHS to Cassette conversion on the tapeheads forums (with mention of this thread of course), and they're saying that while all this is plausible- you'd have to mod your deck to get any high quality recordings onto this tape.
VHS uses a slightly different type of chromium tape from cassettes.

I'd love to know what software you used to make that diagram btw.

 

I just used powerpoint. Could you please link the tapeheads thread in?