Cassettes still rock!

Thanks uberwaltz and mofi,

It looks like the American Recorder Tape Head Cleaner is the place to start. The Rubber Renue sounds like heavy duty stuff.

I have a lot of cassettes that I recorded back before cds from vinyl for use in the car. It was also back before I had a good turntable, so I’ll see how they sound today.

I bought my first cassette deck for a car in 1965 I believe. ( maybe 66). A Phillips as I recall. Paid over $200 back then. All my friends had 8 track and the music stores had thousands of 8 track tapes and half a dozen cassettes. I guess I was an early adopter. Over the years I collected vinyl and cassettes. Then switched primarily to CD and SACD. About three years ago I hooked up a cassette player to my system. After listening to cassettes for an afternoon I threw them all away. Too much compression in my opinion . Now I primarily listen to vinyl with  a healthy dose of Tidal streaming to audition new music. Don’t miss
my old cassettes. 

Threw them away??
Criminal.... Lol.
Could have at least taken to Salvation Army!
😁😁

I listen to LPs at home for a number of reasons. Do I care that my LPs are not "digitized" and portable? Nah.... That's what Napster was for back in the day and what ripping CDs is for today....
Sound quality and the material in the LP jacket are two things digital can never equal..... Same goes for tape...
Taping from LP playback is an analog recording of an analog recording at a very high level.... How can that possibly sound like "crap"?
With this "quarantine" I am finding that making a tape of the "top tracks" I play for the day to be quite satisfying. They are great for playback while hanging with the family as every track is great and the sound is so damn good.... My young girls still cannot believe the tech and how good it sounds. If I get my hands on more blank tapes they will likely be making their own to play when they can finally have friends over.... :-)
This "new" Nak has made all the difference.

Although I have purchased over 50 big multi-box classical CD sets, the individual CD or small sets and most of my Jazz sets have an abundance of recording and historical information concerning the music and artists, more than the typical LP had.  Yes, the print is small but I'm nearsighted and can easily read the fine print.  Some of the rock and pop CDs have difficult color on color print which is difficult to read but usually have less information anyway.  Cassettes, not so much.  They rarely had much information if any accompanying them.  Long live the LP and CD.