I found my old cassette tapes, many with music and many others with stories and children’s songs. I wanted to put a few tapes my daughters to see if you like. I am very sorry to throw them away.
But many are broken, they have the tape broken. So I will explain how they were arranged, as a tribute, because I do not think there are many people interested in fixing them. But if they ever fall into your hands and you want to be able to hear it, the post may be useful.
Look. The magnetic tape is missing, because when trying to reproduce it has broken and stayed inside, or was already broken and I have not noticed when I put it.
As I write this I realize that this is an obsolete technology article. That surely my daughters and their generation will never use it. My nephews have no idea what cassette tapes are or how they are used. If it is difficult to find radio cassettes in stores..
The famous Sony Walkman was a real revolution, the predecessor of mp3 players and iPods. CD, DVD, everything has become obsolete. How long will the current digital formats we hear through the iPod or smartphones last? What will come out in the future to replace it, some cochlear implant?
How to fix a cassette tape
It is very, very simple. We simply open the cassette by carefully separating the two parts with a small screwdriver.
We look for the ribbon cutting.
We take where the tape has broken and we are going to paste it with a little zeal.
On both sides so that it does not release. And then we trim what is left over.
This is an ancient repair technique. Simple but works perfectly. If you are lucky and you have been released like me in the hitch you will not notice anything when the sound is reproduced, if the break has been through the tape, you will have one or 2 seconds of cutting in the song depending on how skillful you are been with zeal.
Cassette tape and Bic pen
Do you remember how the tapes were rewound? Yes, with the Bic pen, although the players brought options to rewind, something always happened, they ate the tape, it didn’t work well, you were listening to another tape and you ended up rewinding by hand, with the pen.
I have looked for one at home to take the picture and I don’t have a sad pen of the time to fix the music tape. I had to turn it with scissors.
For the nostalgic people, I promise to update the article with a picture of the rewind with Bic pen.
How easy it was to fix these ancient objects. Every time we need more and more knowledge and technology to fix any machine that breaks down.
Life cycle of cassettes and vinyl records
While vinyls have become objects of worship for collectors and music lovers, cassettes have been forgotten to disappear. Could the audio quality of the format have been improved? Would the cassettes have also resisted as objects of worship?
The reality is that the few tapes that are still only used to make crafts. I sign up to make an article to recycle, reuse or make crafts with cassettes and finally give a worthy end to our tapes before they end up in the recycling bin.