Sony CCP 1330

Banana Tapes

New member
Don't know if this is the proper thread to post this in because I know how old the gear is, but I figured I try here since it is a sony product and all.

I've recently invested in a Sony CCP 1330 cassette reformatter/duplicator for use in mass producing artist's cassettes without me having to sit and do it all by hand. This thing needed some serious work and required me to do copious amounts of cleaning and demagnetizing just to get the heads to latch to the tapes.

Now that the deck heads latch, I'm getting what I can only describe as 'tape bleed' (I would say print through, but it's not reel to reel so didn't know if that was proper terminology) in my duplication deck. During moments of silence on the A side of my cassette, I am hearing audio from side B and vice versa. It is faint, but still there.

Is this because of my tape heads being un-aligned? Could this have anything to do with my demagnetizing work? I honestly have no idea but would like to get an outside opinion.
 
It sounds to me like the tape heads need alignment. The other thing that was common with tape is the magnetism would 'bleed' if the tape was dormant for a long time. Periodically the tape should be forwarded to the opposite position to avoid this. If these tapes were previously used then it's possible the erase head isn't strong enough/working well enough to remove all the old content which is possibly what you're hearing as well.

(Cassette) Tape is really a horrible medium for long term (even medium term) storage. It was what we had, but why anyone would want to go back to it is beyond me. Many of my old 4 track and mastered tapes from the early/mid 1990s have a decent amount of bleed. The fidelity is still there though, although I'd say the overall quality is poor despite these being okay mixes for the time. IMO you are wasting yours and everyone else's time resurrecting this dead format. Vinyl at least makes sense. Just my $0.02 There's a very very very valid reason cassettes died as quickly as they did once writable CDs were affordable. They suck in every single measurable way!
 
Are you using tape to mass produce ,or is it all you have @ the moment? Where can one find this information , magnetism, and bleeding (I am new here) and need to learn this no matter how antiquated it is .
 
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