Cassette-i-quette

Over the past 25 years, we’ve produced millions of custom-loaded tapes and we’ve discovered several things about caring for tapes and tape equipment that often get overlooked. Here are just a handful of helpful hints to make your cassette ministry or business even more fruitful.

Typically, a quality cassette deck should record with high fidelity for up to 400 hours before it displays any record head problems. The tape heads of a recorder should be cleaned at least every 10 hours of use. For a free brochure on proper duplicator cleaning maintenance, call our service department at 1-800-426-8664, Ext.280, or you may view the instructions here on our website.

When recording, set the record levels with the meter occasionally touching the red. This generally gets the best signal to noise ratio and keeps signals from overloading, or disappearing when things get quiet.

When transporting your tapes in a car, store them away from direct sunlight — and as far away from your car’s transmission as possible. In either case, doing so will avoid sound distortion or loss of signal. The vehicle’s drive shaft can create a low level magnetic field. So even within a few trips, you could lose quite a bit of recorded signal.

If you must reuse a tape, you should always rewind the tape in both directions until it runs freely. If after two attempts the tape still drags, don’t use it.