Cassette Tape Ministries

Do You Recycle Your Cassette Tapes?

Many churches have Tape Ministries of one kind or another. Since about 1990, the cassette tape as stayed about the same price. At wholesale, a good quality T90 music tape with labels and case are about $1.10 or less. If a church only makes an Archive set of tapes, it will only cost $55.00 per year.

Cassette Recorder and players are not all the same. Cassette tapes are not all the same. Cassette tapes are an excellent method of passing information around. When a cassette is recorded, on one machine and played on another, the second machines could be very different. The effects on the physical tape can have a major impact the next time the tape is used on another cassette player or recorder.

When a recorded tape from a church is passed around, the next player could tighten the tape, stretch the tape, track poorly or the pickup wheel could be too slow. Any one of these problems could make recycling cassettes a problem for the church. Sure, often there is no problem. But if you think that your tape recorder’s record life seems short, it is most likely due to recycled tapes coming back in poor condition. When a cassette recorder has to work harder of tape that are too tight or poorly tracked, the newly recorded tape will most likely be stretched, having wows and flutters.

Typically, a decent cassette recorder should last 5 years or 400 hours of record time before you encounter major problems. Tape heads of a church recorder should be cleaned every 10 hours of record time or playback time. If you are getting shorter cassette recorder life than 5 years, it is either because you have a cheap cassette recorder or you are recycling tapes.

Here are some other tips for Cassette units.

If you have any other suggestions for this article, send your e-mail to: jdb@jdbsound.com


A comment from a web surffer.


Joe:

FWIW: I can not confirm the cause, but-
I started erasing tapes I made on my (or church's)deck using a Radio Shack handheld ($25) 120vac eraser. Two of those erased tapes stopped the recorder while in record mode. No obvious reason - unless the tape "stuck" to itself ? and put enough tension on the end of tape sensing to stop the recorder. This happened once in the TASCAM dual deck at the church (during service - missed a few words of sermon) and once in my personal Kenwood KXW-8050. Maybe I got too close or held the eraser next to tape too long and did a partial melt? I have since started fast forwarding and rewinding (as you suggested) each erased tape. No problems since (so far).

[Tape type: I am using TDK Type I 90 min tapes - since we are not using a high speed duplicator ( i do them at home ). 75 cents each at discount store.]

-- Max Morse, Lakewood, CO

(ps: nice new graphics, etc on your www site.)
http://gbgm-umc.org/churches/lakewoodco/




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by JdB Sound, Acoustic.