Best Way to "Erase" Used Cassette Tapes?

I have quite a few REALLY nice Maxell Position II and IV cassette tapes from the 80's that were recorded on only once back in the day.

What I'd like to do is wipe them clean to use for future home projects. What's the best way? When I was a kid I'd simply record over them with an unused input (AUX, for instance, before there was such a thing as a CD player and the AUX was unused), but they always sounded "used" after that (louder hiss).

Do those "bulk eraser" things from back in the day work? I actually purchased one at an estate sale a while back for a measily buck and have been meaning to give it a whirl, but I thought I'd ask y'all first. It looks kinda like a very small hair drier and is quite heavy for it's size. I'm guessing there's a magnet or something in there? Looks like this one:




Thanks for any and all help.

 

Why don't you just record over them as needed? That's what the erase head does when you record...

 

I ceratinly can (and have). I would just prefer to have a clean slate from the beginning.

 

I used to have a bulk eraser for instrumentation tape (reel-to-reel). It was the size of an old VCR, and had a slot into which you pushed the reel, then slowly pulled it out. You would rotate the tape 90 degrees, and then repeat. It creates a huge magnetic field, and completely wipes the tape, so (a) yes, they work, and (b) be sure you don't have anything magnetically sensitive (like credit cards) on you when you use it (mine could kill certain watches back in the day!).

The type you show in your photo is a manual type, but the principle is the same. If you don't have instructions, there are videos on youtube on how to use it.

 

Just found this on the interwebs:



My bulk eraser was pretty much the same. You would push the black piece down, which opened the window to insert the tape. It was VERY heavy!

 

Not necessarily true. The erase head will only erase the tape for the width of the head's gap. If the tape was a full track recording, the erase head will only earse a few stripes.

If the tape was recorded on a different recorder, it's possible that the erase head will not wipe the tape clean as well as will a bulk demagnatizer.

Bulk demagnatizers do have issues. They can create their own artifacts, such as recurring hum fields which sound like a thumping in the background of the hiss. That said, you can record over them and remove most of that, but once again only where the gaps of the erase head contact the tape. The rest of the tape can still have the thumps.

Once again, this will usually not be a problem is the tape is played back on the same machine that recorded it. If you play it back on a machine with a different head allignment all bets are off.

We used to bulk erase some 2" tapes for studio use, particularly if switching from 16 track to 24 track or visa versa, and they almost always had some of that thumping sound present. Once rerecorded it was rarely a problem, but on occasion it was. Once you learn to recognize that sound you may hear it from time to time, but like many things only a few critical listeners like me will probalby notice it.

 

cant quite remember exactly where i had found this thing several years back,
-at a Rummage Sale, i think- but it is indeed a heavy bastard for it's size.

i think i recall trying it out just once, on a mid-80's MAXELL XL-IIS
that i had picked up previously recorded on.

when i passed it through, i could see the tape pack on the reel get kind of
distorted momentarily as the cassette came through.

it did not seem to do any harm at all, but it bothered me none the less.

further, i'd be loathe to pass any cherry-condition collector-grade tapes
through the thing, as i recall it being a slightly snug fit through,
and that might be just fine for garden-variety dictation blanks,
but not for beautifully made and finished late-70's-through-early-90's Hi-Fi-grade
MAXELLs, TDKs, ETC..

 

Use the bulk eraser. There is a transformer inside which which throws out a strong electromagnetic field. I suggest you wave it slowly around the tape and withdraw it slowly. This should erase the tape and leave no magnetic signature.
You can do the same thing with a good size drill as it produces an electromagnetic field.

 

Doug, he's talking about cassette tapes, not studio tapes.

 

Yes, but the the same should apply to all formats of tape.

If you erase a cassette tape on one machine that was recorded on another machine, you may not erase everything you want. If you play that tape back on a different machine you may still hear remnants of what you thought you had erased.

Is this likely? Of course not, but it happens.

Btw, there are full track cassettes but mainly those are prerecorded tapes which would not be likely candidates for rerecording.

 

Back in the tape days, I was taught to start the degaussing with the tape cartridge (or pancake, or cassette, etc.) in contact with the degausser, then push start on the degausser, then to translate laterally the tape cartridge in little circles, about an inch or two in diameter. While I'm moving the tape cartridge in circles, I slowly move the whole tape cartridge away from the degausser until it's about an arm's length away. Then I turn off the degausser. Don't leave the degausser on if it doesn't need to be - those things can get pretty hot.

I was taught that you want the envelope of magnetic field oscillations to die off gradually, rather than abruptly - hence the moving away from the degausser unit instead of just shutting it off.

We used to reuse the 1/4-inch reel-to-reel tapes at our radio station back in the '80s, because that stuff was expensive. In general, we'd degauss before we record on them, but the world didn't end if we just relied on the erase heads on our decks.

I never bothered degaussing cassettes regularly. The monstrous degausser units we had at the radio station would pretty violently shake the tape in the cassettes, and I didn't want to overdo it.

 

This is what I have always done. When I used a demagnatizer for tape heads, or whatever, I alwys used a long power cord so I could approach and retreat slowly and from a distance. I never quite knew how essential this was, but it wasn't so hard to do, so it became my standard operating procedure.

This was also somewhat the case when degaussing a TV tube.

Btw, the thumping sounds I mentioned from bulk erasing, were usually down 50db or more, so most people would have probably never noticed.

 

Perhaps a better question is, in this day and age, why the hell would you record onto a cassette?!

 

This whole thing seems like a solution without a problem. I had an uncle who was an engineer for Westinghouse and he had a penchant for making things more complicated than they needed to be. Keep it simple, guys.

 

for fun and nostalgia, of course.


i mean, where else could you expect to find uniquely beautiful pieces of fine industrial art like these
for REC/PLAYBACK media and equipment?

 

Beacause it's still a LOT of fun for us 40+ somethings. Takes me back to Saturday nights when I was in junior high school making compilations for my Walkman.

If you didn't grow-up with cassette tapes, you wouldn't understand. There is a LOT that goes into making a compilation cassette. You need to lay out the track list, check recording time plus 2 second or so gaps between songs, etc. VERY different from buring or ripping on a computer. There's just a certain magic to it.

 

Ah, the good old days, there was no drag and drop on a cassette deck.

 

Because some of us have music on cassettes that is not available on CD.

 

True that...I still have some cassette tape material from my youth that aren't on any other format (and most likely will never be).

 

I buy every degausser I see at a garage sale, although you can build one too: they're like a transformer or choke with one side of the magnetic core removed so there is no complete path.

The best way to degauss is to use a variac and bring the level up and down slowly. The pro tape erasers some times had circuits that did that automatically, which watch degaussers do too.

WHY would you want to record on cassette? Because it's fun, or could be. Especially if you have an old car with a factory cassette deck.

 

So do I, but this isn't the issue at hand...

 

There are some of us that have older vehicles that have in dash cassette players.
My 1970 Jeep's dash won't accommodate a CD player.
Three hole mounting is the only option.

 

I just record over the first 25 seconds of mine (no reason for that number, it just happens). Then I rewind and take a listen through a set of head phones. What this does is to let me know if the machines erase head is doing it's job. So far so good. BTW, I do all my cassette inserts in MS Publisher, which is then transferred to 4X6 photo paper.

M~

 

Big issue to consider, most bulk erasers will not erase Type IV tape. Takes a lot more erase current to handle it.

 

Try swiping a magnet over the tape for a few minutes and if it doesnt clear it all,keeping wiping until it does (I have cleared tapes this way (A FEW TIMES BY MISTAKE!!))


Good luck