[mbself]

Originally Posted by showtaper

Your problem is more likely a bad pressure pad. These do not age well. Instead
of doing their job (helping to maintain tape to head contact) they can actually
cause the tape to skew making the sound you describe. A good double capstan
deck does the same job, making the pressure pad redundant.

I would suggest you try both of these techniques:

1) Remove the pressure pad and play the tape in a good double capstan deck.

2) Buy a new cassette tape (one held together with screws) and put the tape
you want to play in the new shell (thus having a new pressure pad).

This has worked many times for me.......

Thanks, this may work to rescue something i want badly to fix.

Oh, and by the way, my oven only goes down to about 170 and even if it went to 100...cheap home oven thermostats are terribly innacurate. Probably need to find a food dehydraytor or something similar. Anyone have a Blue M oven?