Hello, I recently purchased a set of pre-recorded tapes. One of them has very poor sound quality. It is very muffled and unstable, with strong variations. The tape has obviously suffered from time (it's 40 years old) and conditions of use and storage. Perhaps it has been magnetized too. The original recording may not have been of the best quality either. Physically it seems to be in good condition. Its brown color shows that it is a type I tape. I wonder if I could re-record this tape from a good quality source and hope to improve the listening experience. What do you think about this ? Have you ever done this ? With what result ?
I guess it’s a possibility to re-record it, but you don’t know what you will get. The original recording you have there may be sounding bad because the cassette is damaged, in which case whatever you re-record over it may sound just as bad or worse. If you like the music, get yourself a new blank cassette and just find a good source to record the music from. I have never re-recorded the same music over a pre-recorded cassette, personally I don't see the point. I'd rather just go and find another original, if I really want that music that badly.
It looks like that pressure pad under the tape has had a hard life, maybe if you replaced that it would sound better?
I didn't notice that about the pressure pad. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I'll have a closer look at it.
Yes, check for the pressure pad. If you are going to record over it, make sure it does not say something like "Chrome" or "Chromium Dioxide" or "CrO2" - the recording won't be good.
I wouldn't even bother, The tape itself may be degraded to the point of particulate separation. many of the studio recorded cassettes didn't use the best quality tape formulations. depending on the conditions the tape was stored, the foam pressure pad mounted on the metal plate or metal spring band, usually is the first to thing to go, either the pad is dried to the point of crumbling apart or the glue has separated from the pad and the pad is missing all together. If the tape is sounding muffled and your sure the player your using is well aligned with clean heads and rollers and is functioning well, I wouldn't waste my time on it. But, if you just wanna have fun and mess around, by all means do it and post your results !! Ha ha ha ... Can't say I haven't done some strange things myself. XD
Unfortunately, many pre-recorded cassettes did not use very high quality tape. This may not have been an issue when the cassettes were new, but it will show up now after being played many times. My opinion is you can try to re-record, there's nothing to lose if you already have that music in digital format. You can do it for the sake of doing it just to see what happens. If you have a deck with manual bias adjustment and the tape is losing high frequencies, you can compensate that by giving it some negative bias. Do this if you're curious to see what happens, but note it's not a necessarily a reliable solution. By the way, does the tape looks glossy or matte ? I can't distinguish in the picture you posted because the tape is in the shadow. Type I tape should be glossy if it's not worn out or non-standard (the so-called TYPE 0).
