Freeing up Jammed Cassette tapes for MP3 conversion

[Crispy]

I've been converting my cassettes to MP3 for several years with moderate success.

I use Nero Soundtrax or Audacity to capture the audio and where necessary clean them up using the audio editors resident in those programs.

The one area that is causing me problems is trying to play old cassettes that are so tight that they won't play in the cassette player. I've tried winding the tapes forward and backward to attempt to 'loosen them up' However they still seize up in the player. I'm worried if I do it too much the tape will simply break.

Does anyone have any tips for freeing up stuck cassette tapes?

[bravejordy]

Is the cassette housing held together by screws or is it glued? If it's screwed, you could try loosening them a little - just a half-turn of each one (there's usually five) - and see if that helps.

If it's glued, you could try gently prising it apart and transferring the spools to another cassette housing (preferably one that screws together). Be warned though, this requires a lot of patience and should only be attempted if you feel confident enough to do it.

[romko]

this is caused by the tape being played , wound a bit, played again on another machine etc. and has been unevenly wound. the layers of tape are thus at slightly different heights and jam against the inside of the plastic shell. cheap ghetto blaster type units tend to treat them especially badly.


the only way to free such cassettes to the point at which they spool ok is by gently squeezing the plastic around the holes where the toothed spool hubs are. This brings all the layers more or less into line.

I've only ever had a couple which didn't succumb to that, and they were really knackered (spills etc in them)