Cassette Tapes

Never used "Dolby" on tapes before today. Always just seemed to muffle the sound. Maybe I was just using low quality tape decks?

Dolby B on my new tape deck removes the brightness and cymbal wash so perfectly from cobalt/chrome tapes. Dolby C still muffles but works brilliantly on metal bias tapes. Who knew Dolby was actually a useful thing #always_the_last_to_know
 
Hi guys, just discovered this thread. Last weekend I bought just over 100 cassette's of live music recorded by the previous owner. The majority are of live gigs here in London by some big name jazz musicians, so far I have listened to the likes of Art Blakey, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, etc. I have noticed that there is a shrill distortion to the horn sections (any sax, trumpet etc) and I wondered if this is something to do with the tape itself (and can hopefully be fixed). I have uploaded one of the worst examples here. Has anyone come across this before?

Just some additional info. I do not have a tape deck and have been playing them through an old walkman. I dont think the walkman is the issue as some are worse than other, but I am in the process of trying to find another tape deck/walkman to compare. Cheers

Cassette tape distortion
 
Selaws said:
Hi guys, just discovered this thread. Last weekend I bought just over 100 cassette's of live music recorded by the previous owner. The majority are of live gigs here in London by some big name jazz musicians, so far I have listened to the likes of Art Blakey, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, etc. I have noticed that there is a shrill distortion to the horn sections (any sax, trumpet etc) and I wondered if this is something to do with the tape itself (and can hopefully be fixed). I have uploaded one of the worst examples here. Has anyone come across this before?

Just some additional info. I do not have a tape deck and have been playing them through an old walkman. I dont think the walkman is the issue as some are worse than other, but I am in the process of trying to find another tape deck/walkman to compare. Cheers

Cassette tape distortion
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I can't answer you but I want to be tagged on every post you will write about these tapes. You made such an amazing discovery and I hope there will be something to be done with these tapes! Maybe the guys at Jazz in Britain could help you?
 
Skalap said:
I can't answer you but I want to be tagged on every post you will write about these tapes. You made such an amazing discovery and I hope there will be something to be done with these tapes! Maybe the guys at Jazz in Britain could help you?
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Funny thing is that I have just listened to an interview with Zev Feldman of Resonance where he talks about travelling the world to find live recordings that people took at concerts. I imagine some of these would be of interest.

My favourite so far is Art Pepper at Ronnie Scotts 20th June 1980. I thought this would have been included in the Pure Pleasure 'Complete Art Pepper At Ronnie Scotts' but it isn't and was in fact recorded 7 days prior with a different selection of tracks. In between each one Pepper talks to the crowd and provides an anecdote of how he came to compose or select the track. Towards the end of the performance a rep from Jazz Journal International goes on stage and presents Pepper with an award for their 1979 Reader's Poll musician of the year. Pepper then gives a speech about how he has only won 1 plaque before, which was a Downbeat award to mark being runner up to Charlie Parker in the late 1940's.
 
If you're just playing back my guess would be that it has to do with the record input levels when they recorded it. The warble tho! Most likely your device using to play it.

This is awesome tho. How did you come upon a collection like this?
 
zomgbear said:
If you're just playing back I'd say it most likely has to do with the record input levels when they recorded it. The warble tho! Most likely your device using to play it.

This is awesome tho. How did you come upon a collection like this?
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Thanks for this, really useful! My plan (when I find the time) is to find some way of transferring them to a digital format and seeing if I can play around with the levels a bit. Not quite sure how to do this yet though, I know there are services that do it but I have quite a lot and can see the price racking up.

I have quoted my original post from the Fresh Grabs below, it has an explanation of how I managed to get them all.

Selaws said:
This is today's find, which is quite the oddity but super interesting. I went to the carboot again today and at the back of one stall there were 3 huge boxes full to the brim of cassette tapes. I glanced at them as I walked past and double-taked when I saw names like John Coltrane, Tubby Hayes, Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, etc. I started rifling through them and chatted to the seller. He does house clearances and the guy who's house these came from was a huge audio nut (jazz specifically) with thousands of pounds worth of hi-fi equipment (which he had sold online) and tons of these homemade tapes. I spent half an hour going through 3 boxes and pulled about 30 tapes out. The guy then said he had 4 more boxes in the van. I went around the rest of the carboot and heading back for another hour worth of digging. I walked away with 108 tapes which range from radio interviews (with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, etc), archival recordings from live radio sessions, dozens of amateur live recordings (a big chunk of which the previous owner had recorded himself) and a whole pile that he had recorded live at Ronnie Scotts in London. Its a staggering amount of music and in the case of those which he recorded himself (at venues like Ronnie Scotts, The Barbican, etc) its likely that these are the only copies.
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Interesting turn of events with the tape haul I bought a few weeks ago. After listening to loads of them I stumbled across a particularly interesting one. It's a home-made compilation of live recordings from Ronnie Scott's club. The really interesting bit about it has led me down a rabbit hole which just keeps getting more and more exciting. Written on the inside of the tapes notes was......'Recorded by___'. So I now have the name of the previous owner, the person that recorded hundreds of hours of live music and who's collection I now have sitting in my living room. What's more, this person wasn't just a keen music fan, but also had very strong links to the industry (he released several albums from the rarities in his collection). Tomorrow I am going to try to contact his family or colleagues, so I won't give away his name just yet. Im super excited though and the idea of learning more about these is a dream come true!
 
Time to revive this thread. After at least 3-4 failed attempts to get into cassettes (not by choice, just because), I think I've come into a nice deck and several cassettes I'm excited about.

First things first, I've got a few tapes that sound warbled. After a deeper inspection, it seems they've got some white mold in spots. Online, it seems some 91% alcohol and a q-tip may help with this. Seems fairly time consuming however for tapes not even worth a quarter. Has anyone done this before?
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
Time to revive this thread. After at least 3-4 failed attempts to get into cassettes (not by choice, just because), I think I've come into a nice deck and several cassettes I'm excited about.

First things first, I've got a few tapes that sound warbled. After a deeper inspection, it seems they've got some white mold in spots. Online, it seems some 91% alcohol and a q-tip may help with this. Seems fairly time consuming however for tapes not even worth a quarter. Has anyone done this before?
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No and I’m out on a cassette at that point. I still need a deck but that Walkman I bought ain’t half bad through the NAD, it was pretty terrible through the Sens (Edit) and the “earbuds” it came with went in the bin after about ten seconds of listening.
 
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Melt Face Molly Drop said:
Time to revive this thread. After at least 3-4 failed attempts to get into cassettes (not by choice, just because), I think I've come into a nice deck and several cassettes I'm excited about.

First things first, I've got a few tapes that sound warbled. After a deeper inspection, it seems they've got some white mold in spots. Online, it seems some 91% alcohol and a q-tip may help with this. Seems fairly time consuming however for tapes not even worth a quarter. Has anyone done this before?
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I’ve actually never thought to check for this, but tbh most of the tapes I play are either new, or sealed old stock. I do have a bit of older/used cassettes that I should check out. It might be a hassle, but putting in the effort to clean a couple of those cheap tapes might be worth it for practice.
 
That Nostalgia boot sounds awesome.

Cannot recommend the Wu. The FUCK sounds like an old ass tape. lol.

I should really listen to the rest of them.
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
Here's what I'm working with. Plus a couple dozen bootlegs my uncle made from the 80s. Shout out @swamp for one of my first cassettes, that Rancho tape.


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I forget I produced that tape. That was a real fun experience and time. And also an oddly high amount of musician drama for the most low stakes indie-est tape ever assembled. #precovidnostalgia

Very jealous of that Crash Test Dummies tape. I got the CD for Christmas the year it came out, so it is technically the first CD I ever had (along with Pearl Jam’s 10 and Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication, which I also got for Xmas) and a very nostalgic record for me. And it was still the tape era so having it on cassette would be so satisfying.
 
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