Tape Notes · How to

How to look after cassettes: storage, cleaning and fixing a chewed tape

15 October 2026 · 8 min read

Cassettes are tougher than they look, and most of what goes wrong comes down to three things: heat, slack tape and a dirty player. This guide covers how to store tapes, the pencil trick, how to rescue a chewed tape and how to clean a player so it doesn't happen again.

Storing tapes

• Upright, in their cases. Stand cassettes on their long edge like books. The case keeps dust off the tape and the J-card flat.
• Cool, dry and steady. The Library of Congress suggests room temperature or below and fairly dry air for a home collection. Sudden changes do as much harm as heat, so avoid lofts, garages and damp cellars, and keep tapes away from radiators and sunny windowsills.
• Never in a hot car. A glovebox or dashboard on a sunny day can warp a shell and stretch the tape inside it.
• Away from magnets. A strong magnet close to the tape can erase it. Everyday exposure rarely does damage, but don't keep tapes on top of loudspeakers or amplifiers, or next to motors, transformers or the vacuum cleaner.
• Wound to one end. Put a tape away at the end of a side rather than stopped halfway through a song. The tape winds more evenly, and the clear leader, not your music, sits across the opening.
• Protected. Break out the two small tabs on the back edge of tapes you want to keep, so nobody records over them by mistake. (Our mixtape guide has more on finishing a tape.)

Bringing tapes in from somewhere cold? Give them a few hours to reach room temperature before you play them.

Before you play an old tape

1. Look through the window. The tape should be wound smooth and even. White powdery spots or fuzz on the edges of the tape are mould: don't play it, because it spreads to the player. A tape transfer specialist can clean it.
2. Take up any slack with a pencil (below).
3. Wind it through once. Fast-forward to the end of the side and rewind on a deck you trust, so the tape lies evenly on the spools before its first play in years.
4. Use a player you know works. Never test a precious tape in a player that's been eating tapes.

The pencil trick

A six-sided pencil (or a six-sided biro) fits snugly in the toothed hub of a cassette spool. Push it into the hub on the side the loose tape is heading for and turn it slowly, so the tape winds onto that spool. Keep the tape flat as it goes in and smooth out any twist before it reaches the shell. Stop when the tape is snug across the opening, not tight.

It matters because a slack loop is exactly what gets caught in a player. In the Walkman years people also wound tapes back by hand to save their batteries.

Why players chew tapes

The usual causes are a dirty or worn pinch roller, a worn drive belt that stops the take-up reel pulling, and slack tape. Thin tape suffers most, which is one reason C-120s have a bad name (see our guide to tape lengths).

How to fix a chewed cassette

1. Stop at once. Press stop. If the tape won't come free, switch the player off. Don't yank the cassette out: that's what stretches, creases and snaps the tape.
2. Ease it free. Open the door, lift the cassette a little and unwind the loops from the pinch roller and capstan a turn at a time. Tweezers help. Hold the tape by its edges where you can, because skin oils don't do it any good.
3. Smooth out the crinkles. Run the loose tape gently between finger and thumb, or lay it on a clean, flat surface and stroke it flat with a soft cloth. Don't stretch it.
4. Wind it back in with a pencil, flat and with no twists. A twisted tape runs with the wrong side against the head and sounds muffled or silent.
5. Test it in a different, clean player and listen through the damaged part. Light crinkles often play fine. A hard crease leaves a wobble or dropout that won't go away.

If the tape has snapped or is badly mangled

• Cut out the ruined section with clean scissors. Losing a second or two is better than a crumpled stretch that catches every time.
• Splice it. Lay the two ends flat so they meet without overlapping. Put a short piece of audio splicing tape across the join on the shiny back of the tape (never the dull side that touches the head), then trim it flush with the edges. Splicing tape is usually made for wider reel-to-reel tape, so trim it down to the cassette tape's 3.81 mm.
• Avoid ordinary sticky tape. Its glue creeps over time, sticks the layers of tape together and gums up heads.
• Broken at the very start or end? The tape has come away from the clear leader. Splice it back to the leader the same way.

Opening the shell

Some fixes, and every broken shell, mean opening the cassette. Shells held together with small screws (usually five) open easily; welded shells can't be opened without breaking them. Either way, the answer to a broken or welded shell is to move the two spools into a spare screwed shell, such as one from a cheap blank tape.

• Work on a clean table and take a photo before you lift anything, so you can put it back the same way.
• Keep the spools flat so the tape doesn't unwind.
• When you reassemble it, check the tape runs round both guide rollers and in front of the little felt pressure pad.
• Wind it through once with a pencil before you play it.

Cleaning the player

Tape slowly sheds a fine brown dust of oxide. It builds up on the heads, which makes the sound dull, and on the capstan and pinch roller, which makes them slip and chew tapes. Cleaning takes five minutes.

1. You need cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol: 90% or stronger is best, 70% will do. Don't use household cleaners.
2. Get to the parts. On a personal stereo, open the door. On many decks the heads only come forward when you press play, so press play with no tape in, and keep the bud away from anything moving.
3. Clean everything the tape touches: the heads, the capstan, the rubber pinch roller and the tape guides. Dip the bud, shake off the excess and wipe gently until it comes away clean. Don't press hard on the heads.
4. Let it dry for a few minutes before you put a tape in.

Do it every few months, whenever the sound goes dull, and always before you play a tape you care about on a second-hand player. Every so often, demagnetise the heads with a proper head demagnetiser, with the player switched off and following its instructions; one deck maker suggests every 50 hours of use. A player that keeps chewing tapes after a clean usually needs a new belt or pinch roller, which is a job for a repair shop.

Quick fixes

Give it a new J-card

Old tapes often turn up with a faded or missing insert. Once yours plays again, paste in the tracklist and print a fresh J-card for it.

Sources

• Care, handling and storage of audio-visual materials — Library of Congress
• Care and handling of tape — Video History Project
• Storage conditions advice — Recording the Masters
• Cleaning and demagnetising cassette tape heads — Spencertified
• The pencil trick — The Rad Rewind
• How to repair a broken cassette tape — A2D2

More Tape Notes

• J-card design through the decades: from blank-tape stripes to rave tape packs
• Dolby noise reduction on cassettes: B, C and S explained
• Reading a blank tape's J-card: MOL, SOL, bias, EQ and “high position”
• How to make a mixtape: choosing, timing and recording a cassette
• C-46, C-60 or C-90? How much music fits on a cassette
• Printing J-cards at home: paper, settings, cutting and folding
• Cassettes for bands and labels: a short-run release guide
• How to make a cassette J-card: sizes, printing and folding
• Cassette tape types explained: Type I, II, III and IV
• A short history of the cassette tape