Our blank cassette page offers over 78 different shell colors, and your choice of cassette length! But what if you want to get very specific with how long your cassette should be per side? A little known secret is that you can request a specific custom-length in the ‘notes’ section of your order, that way your cassette isn’t swimming in empty space. In this email we’ll tell you how, along with important information you should keep in mind before ordering.

The Customer Notes section can be found in the checkout stage of your order. In the case of the image above, I want the cassette to be 23:30 per side. The length selector on the blank tapes product page can be changed by increments of minutes, so in this scenario I would be requesting a 48 minute tape (24 minutes per side.) With this customer note, the empty space on the cassette will be minimized. The time length per side should be based on the length of your longest master (i.e. if Side A is longer than Side B, base your length on Side A.)

Now, the following is important:

1) You should add 7 seconds of silence at both the beginning and end of each side.
This will eliminate the risk of audio being cut off by the leader or a cassette that’s simply not long enough. So when you’re calculating the length you need, add minimum 14 seconds.

2) Each cassette deck has a different playback or recording speed, and some are slower than others.
A variance of 1% won’t make a huge difference for a 5 minute tape, that’s about 3 seconds total, but it will make a big difference for a 60 minute tape (36 whole seconds!) That said, the longer the tape, the more extra time you should add. For those who want to venture inside your cassette deck and do some fine tuning, we sell speed calibration tapes in the online store, along with other maintenance tools to optimize your setup.

3) Don’t expect exact precision, don’t expect perfection.
Your calculations can be within the ballpark but there are too many variants to consider for a to-the-second result. Even our tape loader equipment, as well maintained and finely tuned as they are, are subject to slight variance. You should always estimate for more time rather than less. With exception of errors in manufacturing, our blank cassettes are final sale.

So if your cassette is just a bit over the minute increment and you don’t want 50+ seconds of silence at the end of each side, these are some steps you can take to minimize the empty space. From there, it’s up to you on how you’d like to fill up your tape!