@graymattergrcltd @afewbugs Distilled water - mineral deposits on the tape can cause problems.

Also, rinse, don't soak. Unspool a little tape, run through a water bath, carefully lay out to dry.

@afewbugs Opening the shell to clean out excess liquid isn’t too hard so long as you’re gentle and make sure you don’t lose the metal and felt bit that goes under the spot where it meets the player head. Back in the day I transferred tape reels into new cases a few times because I was a disaster and cracked them. It’s probably a good idea to do that to get the bulk of the liquid out, then reassemble it to clean the tape itself like others have described (maybe by gently running it through a couple cotton pads and isopropyl alcohol), then take the case apart again to get rid of any lingering residue. You can do this!

@afewbugs
Have you tried installing linux?

@jamesb I actually cackled out loud at this

@NatureMC @afewbugs
Ugh, messy, and fiddly.

Hopefully it is a cassette that can be opened up.

I would carefully unspool the tape so that it can be washed and respooled after the cassette insides have been cleaned.

If you have a sacrificial cassette, you can transfer the wet tape, while it is still tightly wound, to a spare case, while the original is being cleaned.

You can then pull out the tape in manageable lengths to wash, dry, and respool, before moving onto the next section.

When it is cleaned, it can be put back in the original case.

@afewbugs
Cows’ revenge. Bob Vylan members are #vegan 😉

@afewbugs
The fediverse is nothing but predictable...

Personally I'd give the tape an IPA bath or two, followed by distilled water to try and get rid of the tea residue. It shouldn't affect the sound itself but it might gum up the tape and mechanism.

@jamesb the tape has now been briefly rinsed and put in a Tupperware full of desiccant beads overnight. It's in the hands of the gods now

@afewbugs
Got an air fryer?

@afewbugs 1. *Don’t* put in in a car cassette player. They are guaranteed to eat any tape you care about and will require disassembly.
2. Any player is likely to eat any tape that has even a tiny speck of anything sticky. Cleaning required first.
3. If you’re lucky, the liquid didn’t enter the shell. If it did, I see others described transferring it to a clean housing.
4. The exposed bit of tape can be gently extracted and cleaned with distilled water and or isopropyl alcohol. Rewinding is accomplished with the proverbial pencil.
5. Some old tapes begin to lose their rust. There are literal baking procedures described online, but this is beyond my expertise. If it’s shedding dust, you really need an experienced archivist.

@jamesb no I'm going to deep fry it, air fryers just blow the batter off

@afewbugs
Heh.

<MansplainingMode:On>

Some air fryers have a low temperature dehydration setting. I use it for drying 3d printing filament (don't tell my wife) but I imagine it would work well for this use case as well.

<MansplainingMode:Off>

@afewbugs
I only told you to blow the bloody damp off.