Audio Cassette Tape Pressure Pad Deterioration

We are currently working with one of our NDA heritage archive clients on a large catalogue of audio cassettes.

This particular order has the unfortunate issue in that the pressure pad on most of the tapes has dropped or dislodged.

PRESSURE PAD DETERIORATION

On the cassette, just behind the tape at the point where it will touch the deck’s heads, there’s a small pressure pad that should keep the tape/head contact firm. Especially on old tapes, this pressure pad can “drop” – meaning the metal spring loses its push and the pad relaxes back a little.

The “drop” of the pad can also be uneven, so the contact is, say, still firm in the middle of the tape, but less so at the edge. This can cause all sorts of sonic problems, including muddiness. It’s sometimes possible to reassert the pad so its contact is once again strong , but normally our engineers will move the reels into a completely new casing when the pad drops.

CONSIDERING YOUR AUDIO ARCHIVES

It is important to consider your audio cassette tape storage archiving, ensuring the preservation of audio content. Magnetic tape such as cassette tapes, reel to reel tapes, 8-track reels and video tapes are prone to deterioration. It is becoming imperitive that audio magnetic tape should be digitised sooner rather than later to avoid the bindings deteriorating further.

MAGNETIC TAPE DETERIORATION

Magnetic tape is bound using a geletin like glue. This geletin holds two layers, the taping and the magnetic strip enabling the magnetic signals to be recorded. When the geletin binding coating starts to deteriorate, it starts to breakdown causing a 'sticky' like substance which can eventually glue the tape together. We would suggest baking to remove the moisture, but in some cases, deterioration has gone too far and extracting the audio is near impossible.

STORAGE OF ARCHIVES

Ideally, cassette tapes should last around 30 years if stored correctly, away from heat, humidity and UV rays. We would always suggest a temperature controlled room, rather than any fluctuating storage facilities. This will help preserve the content until you are able to have these converted.

If we can support you with your archival projects, please do contact cheryl@oxfordduplicationcentre.com or call 01865 457000.

Kind regards

Cheryl

www.oxfordduplicationcentre.com

Comments

The Repair Shop - How To Spot A Ferrotype Camera 1855-1940s

After watching The Repair Shop on BBC1 restore a beautiful and rather rare ferrotype camera I thought a blog on the process would be interesting. Not only did they repair but they managed to have the camera working, taking photographs. This was very inspirational given the age of the camera. ABOUT FERROTYPE PROCESS Ferrotypes first appeared in America in the 1850s, but didn’t become popular in Britain until the 1870s. They were still being made by while-you-wait street photographers as late as the 1950s. The ferrotype process was a variation of the collodion positive, and used a similar process to wet plate photography . A very underexposed negative image was produced on a thin iron plate. It was blackened by painting, lacquering or enamelling, and coated with a collodion photographic emulsion. The dark background gave the resulting image the appearance of a positive. Unlike collodion positives, ferrotypes did not need mounting in a case to produce a positi...

Onion Skin Archive Book Scanning - What is this and how do we process the pages?

CURRENT BOOK SCANNNING PROJECT. We are currently working on a very large archive of old books that require HQ scanning to Archival TIFF images. Once processed, these images will be prepared to PDF with OCR (optical character recognition) for a complete searchable output. The difficulty in this order, is the books are prepared using a medium called Onion Skin Paper. Whilst we are very confident in preparing this type of medium, it is very important to be aware that there are risks with scanning, given the sometimes-fragile nature of the paper. Tears and rips can occur, so a very gentle white glove approach is required. Equally, with the nature of onion skin, the paper is very translucent which requires a sheet of white paper to be placed under each page before scanning. This then grants a very good HQ image that we can work with. WHAT IS ONION SKIN PAPER? Onion skin paper is a type of very light weight, almost translucent paper that ...

Vellum Document Deed Scanning in Oxfordshire

One of our most interesting orders came in today in the form of a vellum property deed dating back nearly 200 years. We were asked to prepare a digital copy so our client could preserve the original. After assessment we decided on which scanner to use and scanned the deed to a high quality Archival TIFF file before applying post production tone and sharpening. The results were stunning and a wonderful image produced. Interesting fact: To ensure you could prove a duplicate copy, some deeds had a defined curved wave cut out at the top. This meant the original's replica could be matched 100% to the original, safeguarding fraud. What is vellum? Vellum is prepared animal skin or "membrane", typically used as a material for writing or printing on, to produce single pages, scrolls, codices or books. The word is derived from the Latin word vitulinum meaning "made from calf". Typically deeds are folded and stored. Alth...

Oxford Duplication Centre Ltd

Search This Blog