I am going to be converting some old reel-to-reel to CD and, some of
them have 'bled' through so, the tracks sound garbled. While the
ones' that don't have this problem will be easy to do, will I
essentially have the same problem, as if I made a copy of a cassette
tape to another cassette tape.
What Riley says is accurate. If the tapes were not stored "tail-out"
(that is stored in non-rewound condition) you can expect problems.
This goes for both cassette and reel-to reel. Of course if the head
alignment on the playback machine differs from that of the recording
machine you'll also have issues.
Some machines (all good ones, IMHO) have some degree of azimuth
correction. This can sometimes be applied to good effect. Basically
trial and error, you're looking for maximum high frequency response out
of the recording.
If you have actual print-through, as in layer-to-layer magnetic transfer,
there's not much you can do about it. If the tape was tightly packed,
not stored tail-out, this is more likely.
Different flavors of tape have different characteristics. I don't endorse
it, but see this on tape baking:
http://www.tangible-technology.com/tape/baking1.html
I'd try to avoid doing this to a tape that's tightly wound, but I'd
balance that against the potential oxide loss of winding a tail-out tape
into a looser pack by simply playing it and then doing it.
If you do that play with the azimuth and use headphones to see if
you can reduce the garbage. If you can't and the tape is visibly
losing oxide you're probably hosed.
Take this with a grain of salt, it's been many years since I used
tape regularly.
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