[peel] Muffled tapes

[Roger Carruthers]

Generally there are three things that could cause this: a dirty head, a
magnetised head and/or mis-aligned head (azimuth).

Your first, and easiest solution is a cotton bud and alcohol ­ if your bud
comes away covered in brownish kak , you're probably sorted.
If not, then try to borrow a head demagnetiser ­ but take great care to use
it exactly as per the instructions. Turn it on/off well away from your
heads, move it very slowly in the vicinity of your machine whilst it's on,
and avoid sudden movements near the heads ­ yes, you'll feel like a dick,
but it helps to pretend you're a bomb disposal expert de-fusing a bomb ;-)
As a final resort, adjust the azimuth (if you can ­ not all machines will
allow this without some heavy surgery). Again, probably left to an expert.

But having said all this, none of these should cause an intermittent
problem, except possibly an azimuth problem where the head was a bit loose
and able to shift itself about ­ which is not good.
So your best bet might just be to try another deck ­ beg, steal or borrow;
there are some tasty decks to be had from that BBC auction, which ends in a
couple of days, Nakamichi's, Denons etcŠ.

Šactually, come to think of it, maybe we should chip in and grab a couple of
Naks for the group - do we have any Londoners who could view/pick up for us?
They're currently up to only around £20 a piece!
Cheers
Roger

From:  RobF <robfleay@...>
Reply-To:  <peel@yahoogroups.com>
Date:  Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:34:49 +0100
To:  <peel@yahoogroups.com>
Subject:  [peel] Muffled tapes

 
 
 
   

A quick question if I may - I know a lot of our tape rippers are
knowledgeable in this field..

If we have an old tape and play back is muffled (sounds almost underwater)
what are the general causes of this and is there any way to fix it?

I noticed on a lot of my last batch of L tapes that the start of the tape
(first minute or so) was often muffled but it soon righted itself. Sometimes
it would be muffled but if I pressed stop then start again it became
unmuffled immediately.

Any thoughts? I know we've discussed azimuth at length before but does this
sound like the same thing?