I need to clean and restore very old reel to reel audio tapes?

Please help, I found a bunch of old reel to reels in storage. They are covered in 30 years of dust and dirt. They are piano recordings made by my dad and our family so there is a lot of sentimental value and I don’t want to damage them. Thanks.

If the reels are wound tight then the dust will probably not be on the surface of the tape holding the metal oxide that contain the recordings.

The real danger here is that the tapes, if improperly stored will have deteriorated to the point that they will delaminate from the metal oxides on the plastic tape.
If that is the case then there is little that can be done to save the recordings.

Lightly blowing off the dust with the reels tightly wound should be enough to remove the dust & dirt sufficiently.
If I were you, I would take one of the reels & find a way to slowly wind the tape on to another reel, to inspect the tape & see if any sections are fused together, or if any of the metal oxide is going to fall off.

Damaged sections can be cut out of the reels, & the good sections can be spliced together. But don’t try splicing the tapes on your own unless you know what you are doing, call on an expert if you need to.
As I said before, once the tape is shot then it’s not like film where it can be repaired or restored, you will probably have to just throw away any parts of the tape that are deteriorated.

When you are sure that you have some good tapes ready for playback, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you do not waste any time transcribing the recordings on to digital media.
I am in the process of transcibing some of my own tape recordings on to my computer hard drive using a device that converts the stereo audio signal from my tape players output to my computer via a USB port.
These devices are fairly common now, so I will refrain from recommending a particular brand or model, & leave it up to you which one to get. They are commonly represented as devices for transcribing your old LP records but they work with most tape players as well.

Once you start working with these tapes, if you handle them with care, & be carefull to run them through the tape player as little as possible you have a good chance of being successful. It all hinges on how well these tapes were stored in the 1st place. If they became damaged in storage then there’s not much you can do to make it any worse because the damage will have been already done.

Good Luck!

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