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cassette pressure pads / Disco Arab
Wednesday, March 25th, 2020 12:21 amHow to Replace a Missing Pressure Pad on a Cassette Tape
One of the audio cassettes I had recorded to an MP3 file had a lot of distortion in some of the songs. In small amounts, the distortion is endearing to me, because that's how I remember hearing the music in the past I guess, with some distortion. But one of the songs was really bad...
Playing the cassette itself doesn't sound as bad, so I've re-recorded it today. The tape definitely has a problem near the middle of one side. It got half-way through recording that side and then stopped on its own. The cassette was hard to turn in that area, and the edge of the tape is a bit ruffled. I wound it back and forth a bit with a pencil; hopefully that helped to loosen it. Then I saw that the pressure pad was missing. There wasn't any dullness to the tape's playback, only squealiness and uneven tones (there's a special word for that; can't remember it at the moment). So the lack of pad probably wasn't causing a problem, but it's good to remember in case any other audio cassette sounds dull. The above page suggests using a small piece of sticky-back velcro (loops side) to replace the pad, which I think is a great idea. No glue necessary. So I did that.
This cassette is "Disco Arab" by "Abdul Hassan Orchestra". One of my aunts gave it to me a long time ago; it had belonged to her adult son who had passed away. He had lived in the Middle East (the aunt also gave me his collection of coins and money from various countries), so I had always thought the music was really from that area, even though the cassette label is in English. (The music itself has no vocals.) Today I had the notion to look it up, thinking maybe it was instead from a movie, an old American movie maybe.
Abdul Hassan Orchestra
Hmmm. Not what I was expecting.
What happens if the pressure pad is missing?
Your tape will sound dull on playback with no highs. Recordings will be incomplete and sound equally bad. Keep in mind a dull sounding cassette can be caused by a number of things, not just a missing pressure pad.
One of the audio cassettes I had recorded to an MP3 file had a lot of distortion in some of the songs. In small amounts, the distortion is endearing to me, because that's how I remember hearing the music in the past I guess, with some distortion. But one of the songs was really bad...
Playing the cassette itself doesn't sound as bad, so I've re-recorded it today. The tape definitely has a problem near the middle of one side. It got half-way through recording that side and then stopped on its own. The cassette was hard to turn in that area, and the edge of the tape is a bit ruffled. I wound it back and forth a bit with a pencil; hopefully that helped to loosen it. Then I saw that the pressure pad was missing. There wasn't any dullness to the tape's playback, only squealiness and uneven tones (there's a special word for that; can't remember it at the moment). So the lack of pad probably wasn't causing a problem, but it's good to remember in case any other audio cassette sounds dull. The above page suggests using a small piece of sticky-back velcro (loops side) to replace the pad, which I think is a great idea. No glue necessary. So I did that.
This cassette is "Disco Arab" by "Abdul Hassan Orchestra". One of my aunts gave it to me a long time ago; it had belonged to her adult son who had passed away. He had lived in the Middle East (the aunt also gave me his collection of coins and money from various countries), so I had always thought the music was really from that area, even though the cassette label is in English. (The music itself has no vocals.) Today I had the notion to look it up, thinking maybe it was instead from a movie, an old American movie maybe.
Abdul Hassan Orchestra
The Dutch keyboard-player Hans van Eijck (former member of After Tea and Tee-Set) was the spiritual father of this one-time formation. With some additional anonymous players, disguised as Arabs and with belly dancer Yonina they scored one succesfull hit with the single Arabian Affair in 1978.
Hmmm. Not what I was expecting.