Cassette Conundrum

February 19, 2026•

cassettedisasterold techfixing

Why do I have a Cassette to begin with

Retro tech is something I have a lot of fun messing around with. If I could change out my smart phone for a flip phone, I definitely would. Unfortunately, the world pushes and often requires us to keep up and have the newest and brightest thing.

The little reprieve I get, is the ability to use a cassette player for music while I'm working. I have a box of cassettes my inlaws owned in my bedside table and I switch them around depending on what I want to listen to in a day. Recently, it has been a lot of the Celeste OST, as it has some fantastic music to just vibe to.

It is great to just have a set of pre-made music, because then I don't even get the choice to skip a song or deal with ads on streaming platforms. It allows me to just focus on work with the only interruption being a tape flip every so often.

What happened

I had some music playing as I went to get ready in the morning. Now, my office is upstairs and the bathroom is downstairs. So I left the music playing in the office and walked away for a while. I got back and didn't realize that my music was no longer playing.

After maybe another 30 minutes, I go to turn the music back on and realize that it should still be playing. I think nothing of it but press stop and open it up to find a mess. The tape is all over the place and stuck in a roller.

I immediately panic, because I don't want to lose this cassette and start pulling it out. I am really hoping that I don't break it or mess something up by touching the tape. Eventually I get it all out and it just looks like this.

And...

I ended up texting my family. I knew my parents owned cassette tapes in their youth, so I figured that something similar probably happened to them at some point. They instructed me to use a pencil and rewind the tape back into the cassette. They also included that I should have a slight tension on it to keep it straight.

I couldn't find a pencil nearby, so I used some scissors instead. Luckily I didn't cut any of the tape in doing so, but the cassette was back in working order.

I rewound the tape without any issues, and listened to both side of the tape. There was a little bit of wonky noise in a few spots that I can only assume is from the little bends in the tape. My hope is that by listening to it more, it will straighten out more.

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