Restoring bad prerecorded cassettes

This is interesting. I did restore pre-recorded cassettes myself in the past as had some which left a lot of oxide and residue on the head and pinch roller after just one play.
However, never thought of this process I always opened the shell to do the restoration.

My process is the following:
- remove the hub with tape spooled on it and insert a new hub together with tape, attaching the tape to the original leader tape;
- assemble the shell temporarily and record side A leaving a couple of extra minutes if needed for side B;
- then cut the tape to that length in order to not have extra tape as this would require FF after playing which is annoying;
- attach the second original hub to the cut tape and assemble the shell;
- record side B;

Will try this process in the future, curious how much it would take. The hardest part I see is spooling all the new tape back into the shell...

Thanks for sharing !

 

Thanks for sharing. I have done this process myself a number of times. Labor of love. It takes time to complete, but for an album you find worth it, its a worthwhile project that gives you another excuse to listen to the entire album (again) during re-recording! I usually start by re-recording side 1 of the donor tape in it's shell, trim to length and record side 2, then finally transplant the tape to the desired factory album shell. To my ears, I've improved the quality of recording in every instance.

 

I open the shell using a thin blade (X-Acto or scalpel) starting from the opening for the head/capstans.

In rare cases it can happen that the seam of the shell does open evenly and it breaks a couple of milimeters away from the seam (usually in one of the corners),
but that isn't a problem as the break line will be almost invisible after glueing the shell back.

In the end, I finish with both original hubs. After recording side A and cutting the new tape to length, I attach the second original hub. At this point the shell can be re-assembled.
For re-assembly I use liquid type super glue on the 4 dowel pins where the screws would normally go or somewhere in that area as some cassettes may not have 4 pins.

Here is a video showing the process:

 

if a cassette is to old broken out for the rubbish it goes lads lol

 

Video isn't mine, I just linked it for reference to illustrate how the case is opened.

The logic in your steps is correct, only problem is this: if you record the new cassette on both sides before actually cutting it you will end up having more tape than you actually need.
Most pre-recorded tapes are shorter than 60-min or 90-min blank tapes, so in order to not have a long blank area at the end of each side I cut the tape after recording side A.
Will describe the steps again in more detail:

1. Take a new blank cassette and remove the left-hand hub together with tape spool and attach it to the right-hand original empty spool.
2. Put the 2 hubs back into a shell (doesn't matter which one, for convenience I use the screwed one) and record side A.
3. Caculate the total running length of side A and side B and compare them. Sometimes side B has 1-2 minutes more than side A, in which case leave 1-2min of extra blank tape before cutting.
4. Cut the tape to the length I obtained in previous step and discard the rest.
5. Attach the second original hub to the already recorded side A tape.
6. Now that we have both hubs and the new tape (cut to correct length) we can put them in the original shell.
7. Glue the shell back and record side B.

Hope the steps are more clear now, I realise the initial description was a bit too vague.

So I record side A after I attached the original right-hand side hub to it (together with its leader tape).
This part I do in the blank cassette shell as being screwed it's easier to assembly and disassembly (as I need to diassemble again to attach 2nd hub).
And side B I record after the second hub is attached and shell is ready for final assembly.