How interesting. I've never tried that. We've done this thousands of times too. Some tapes pop apart with very little effort, but these TDKs rarely do. Sounds like a little experimenting is in order.
A few days ago, o got about 15 cassettes to digitize, and three of them, didn't have the presure pad, I replaced them with a piece of cloth that my wife had in the closet
I have a couple of tapes that's have sound issues. one type is a high pitch screeching sound coming over the music, and another the music kind of fades away in places. I'm sure it's probably tape issues but I appreciate any help.
I used to find cassettes in the city streets in the 80's that have been run over hundreds of times and were able to repair them. I would go to Radio Shack and buy a replacement case and take the tape out, and put it in the new case. It sounded untouched.
FYI, I had left a tape like the TDK D in a car for 16 years of extremely hot weather with the windows closed but never on the dash. My dashboard didn't survive, but the tape did and still sounds as good as the day it was recorded. The tape never decayed, nor did the shell.
