Using a Portable Cassette Player Today

Why bother with a portable cassette player?

There is something quietly satisfying about pulling a chunky plastic player from a coat pocket, pressing a stiff mechanical button and hearing the soft clunk of the mechanism engaging. Cassettes never really died; they simply retreated into attics, charity shops and the hands of people who like their music with a bit of grain. Portable players are cheap, they run on a couple of AA batteries for weeks, and they force you to listen to an album in the order somebody chose.

If you have an old Walkman-style machine in a drawer, or you have just bought one at a car boot sale for the price of a coffee, the good news is that most of them can be brought back to life with a little patience. The bad news is that rubber perishes, heads get filthy and belts turn to sticky black goo. Here is how to deal with all three.

Start with the belt, because the belt is always the problem

A portable player that whirrs but does not turn the tape almost certainly needs a new drive belt. The original has stretched, hardened or melted into a sticky ring around the flywheel. Take the back off, photograph everything before you touch it, and lift out the old belt.

• Lay the old belt flat on a ruler and cut it, then measure its length. That is your starting point.
• Order a replacement roughly 5 per cent shorter than the stretched original, which gives you the correct tension.
• Check the cross-section, usually 1.2mm square for older machines and nearer 0.8mm for slim ones.
• Buy a mixed bag of belts rather than guessing a single size. They cost very little and you will use the spares.
• Fit the new belt around the motor pulley and flywheel without twisting it, then hand-turn the flywheel to check it runs true.

While the case is open, look at the pinch roller and capstan. A shiny, hardened or cracked roller will cause wavering pitch and chewed tapes. Replacements are available if you measure the diameter and width carefully.

Clean the tape path properly

Ninety per cent of muffled, wobbly sound comes down to dirt. Use 90 per cent isopropyl alcohol on the heads, capstan shaft and metal tape guides. A cotton bud dipped, not soaked, is ideal; the brown residue that comes off is years of shed oxide.

Be gentler with the pinch roller. Alcohol dries out rubber over time, so clean it with warm water and a trace of mild washing-up liquid instead, then let it dry fully before you reassemble. Do not press hard on the head face; the gap is tiny and easily damaged. Once everything is clean and dry, run a sacrificial tape you do not care about for a minute to clear any remaining residue.

If your machine has not been used for years, a cheap demagnetising wand used with the tape out, moved slowly towards the head and then drawn away, will remove stray magnetism and restore a bit of treble sparkle.

Getting the best from your tapes

Most portable players have a fixed azimuth, but a surprising number have a small screw near the head that lets you fine-tune alignment. Play a tape you know well, listen for dulled cymbals, and turn the screw a fraction at a time until the treble is at its brightest. Mark the original position first so you can always go back.

• Match the tape type to the switch: Type I for ferric, Type II for chrome, Type IV for metal.
• Use Dolby noise reduction only if the tape was recorded with it. Mismatched settings sound either hissy or lifeless.
• Store tapes upright, away from radiators, sunlight and magnets, and never leave one paused in the machine.
• Fast-forward and rewind each tape once a year to relieve tension and stop print-through.

Digitising your favourite mixtapes

Old tapes will not last forever, so copying the ones that matter is sensible. Connect the headphone or line-out socket to a USB audio interface or a simple cable into your computer's input, set the recording level so peaks sit around minus 6dB, and record at 24-bit, 44.1kHz. Clean the tape path first and give the tape a full wind and rewind to settle it.

Record a whole side in one pass rather than stopping and starting, then trim and split the tracks in free audio editing software afterwards. Save the raw recording as a WAV alongside a compressed copy, then back it up in two places. Name files clearly with the date of the original recording, the tape type and who made it — future you will be grateful.

There is a particular pleasure in hearing a mixtape again: the hiss, the slight speed wobble on the first track, the voice of a friend cutting in halfway through. Preserve that as well as the songs.

Living with it day to day

Carry a spare set of batteries, a cleaning cassette and a small screwdriver. Use the pause button rather than stopping and starting, keep the player out of sun-baked car dashboards, and never force a tape into a mechanism that resists. Wind a tape fully to one end before storing it, and give the heads a quick clean every ten hours of play. Looked after properly, a modest portable player will keep going for decades, and your mixtapes will sound exactly as warm and imperfect as they always did.