Why does nobody warn you that cheap cassette decks eat your only master tape
I picked up a used dual cassette deck at a flea market in Akron for $35 thinking I could bounce our 4 track mixes down to tape for that warm sound. The first run through it chewed up the master of our best song, "Porch Light," which took us 3 months of Sunday practices to get right. Turns out the pinch roller was shot and the deck was pulling tape at uneven speed, so I lost the whole take and had to re-record the guitar and vocals from scratch. Then the thing ate a second tape two weeks later, a copy my buddy made of his band's demo, and I finally opened it up and saw the capstan was worn smooth. I'm out about $35 for the deck plus maybe 12 hours of re-tracking and mixing, and I still can't get the drums to sit the same way they did on that first pass. Anyone know a decent budget deck that won't destroy tapes, or should I just give up on tape and bounce to digital?