Cassette tapes and little bitty moths

[woodbowl]

I've got a lot of cassette tapes from years past that I continue to enjoy, but there is a little moth that just loves the backer felt that applys pressure to the tape and head.

I've have not been able to buy replacement felts unless I rob them from a new cassette. I've got over a hundred cassettes that need this little felt and that would get expensive even with the cheap brand of tapes. Even so, a cheap felt would probably produce a cheap sound. I've tried to find felt material that was suitable with some success, but the quality is far from the original. The felt is special in it's application and that is what it needs to be replaced with.

Has anyone had this problem and know a good source to obtain a quality felt? Thanks in advance.

[Furby]

I'd get them to run one time and load them on the puter and then burn a CD.
Robbing one from a new one and moving it to the next one as you load it on the puter would be a good way to spend a long winter!

[Coon]

I agree with the Furbster.  I do however know it just isn't the same when you listen to them old tunes.  Just doesn't seem to take ya back in time to when the music was from present day.  It is just getting harder and harder to get a working casette player.  May as well just burn em to disc so as you don't lose the music.

[Furby]

I have the same problem with about 1000 VHS tapes that need to be "saved". :

[Tom]

You might find an old hat at the Salvation Army Thrift store.  ;D

[mike_van]

I typed "cassette" into the search on ebay - 15,000+ items came up - tapes, players, etc. Much of it had no bids, some real bargains there I think - I've gotten so I look there now for pretty much everything.

[SwampDonkey]

I tell ya Furb, that VHS tape has probably lasted longer than DVD videos. I don't know how many DVD's I have bought when after about 4 plays of the DVD the thing crashes. I don't have much faith in them holding up any where near as long as VHS. The CDDA formated laser disks seem to last well, but DVD is questionable. I have a good DVD player to, not the $20-$200 jobbies. Some DVD's fresh out of the jackets are dead to. 99% of my disks are USA/Canada origin. I have recovered some with my DVD burner software, corrects or skips the errors so it won't hang the playback. Still a PITA to have a brand new disk fail.

[Furby]

Ever try one of those cleaners for DVD's ???

Yeah, I have some VHS's I watched last winter that I recorded around 1990 or so.
Some degrade, but not as bad as I would expect.

[SwampDonkey]

No I haven't used one of the cleaners. There is no loading tray to this one, it automatically feeds as you poke the disk in the mouth and spits with an eject button. Same idea as the car stereo. The discs aren't scratched that I can see, just a dud or back tracks.

Maybe I'll get a cleaner. Never ever used one on my CDDA disk player and i had it 15 years. ;D

[woodbowl]

I tell ya Furb, that VHS tape has probably lasted longer than DVD videos. I don't know how many DVD's I have bought when after about 4 plays of the DVD the thing crashes. I don't have much faith in them holding up any where near as long as VHS.

That's how I view cassettes VS dvd and cd also. I just bought an external hard drive for back up because I didn't feel good about having family pictures on cd for years to come.

Cassettes are wonderful, sure they have their problems, but they can't be beat for the things they can do. For instance, playback, forward, rewind and the ability to find a certain area in a snap. A varible speed play/recorder can slow down a song to distinguish every note clearly. Dub off a favorite song and leave the rest, put them in the order of your choice. Ya got to be a computor guru to do simple things these days.

This is the age of gadgets. I don't have a beef with them, some are great, but others are a big waste of time. Who's got time to jump through all these hoops. Some things are just better, even if they were from a different time. I'm still gona be looking for  those felts, I like cassette! Anybody out there work at a Sony plant?   

[pigman]

I'm just going to stick to my 8-track tapes. I don't like those new fangled cassettes. : ;D

[rebocardo]

I have probably 50 cassette tapes from Commodore computers you can have for the cost of shipping. I think they are just the standard data cassette and have that little felt piece like a normal cassette. I guess I would have to check for moth damage  ;)

S&H would probaly be about $5.75 by media mail.

[SwampDonkey]

Now those were the days. The Commodore Vic20 DataCette recorder. ;D

3 KB programs, not all this bloatware we have today. :D :D :D