[78-L] Cassettes/78's--WAS: "You Gotta Be Kidding" department

[Steven C. Barr]

From: "Cary Ginell" <soundthink at live.com>
> You missed the best part  - trying to splice together a tape that snapped, 
> using itty-bitty tweezers, cutting splicing tape to size and trying to fit 
> the tape into a 1/4" splicing block so it won't move around. What fun!!!
>
>> From: dlennick at sympatico.ca
>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5261963/Rewind-to-the-1980s-as-the-cassette-tape-makes-a-comeback.html
>> Oboy. Hiss, misalignment, speed flux, flutter, tape jams..how we've 
>> missed you.
>>
Nonetheless, I have 2-300 cassettes which contain irreplaceable 
recorded-live
content...so I have to (1) keep them, and (2) be able to play them! More or
less fortunately, my advancing age and a couple of serious head injuries
have limited my hearing to the point that cassettes, and pre-WWII 78's,
sound about as good as anything does...?!

Biggest cassette-based "challenge" which I have had so far resulted
from my leaving a personally-important cassette on my dashboard
one sunny/warm day...! When I found the "remains," its plastic shell
was seriously mis-shapen; I had to carefully open the "remains"
(fortunately screwed together!)...carefully lift out the two reels...
and then place them properly into a new undamaged shell (an
unused cassette had to be sacrificed!). Fortunately, the resulting
"rebuilt" cassette played properly!

In over 40 years of using/recording cassettes, the only problems
I ever had was with automotive "tape decks," which had a nasty
habit of occasionally "eating" the tape (i.e. the tape would get
wound around their mechanism!). It was possible, albeit VERY
difficult, to by-hand retrieve the "eaten" tape and rewind it
into the cassette from whence it had come...!

I realize that what I COULD (and probablt should?) do is to
carefully digitize my cassettes ("Line Out" to "Line In"...?!)
and "burn" them to CD-R's...?! However, I find it worthwhile
to see that the cassette (and my half-vast archive thereof)
is NOT doomed to enforced obsolescence! The question
becomes whether I (being 67.8 years old) will survive
longer than the playing formats for my sonic archives...?!

Steven C. Barr