Technique for recovery of voice data from heat damaged magnetic tape

A method for conditioning, and thus enabling retrieval of intelligence from, magnetic tapes after damage from heat has caused the tape to wrinkle and curl severely thereby reducing tape width to less than one-half its original size. The damaged tape is superposed on a first piece of splicing tape with the oxide side of the magnetic tape in contact with the adhesive side of the splicing tape and then carefully smoothed by a special tool. A second piece of splicing tape is placed on the backing side of the magnetic tape then the resulting tape stack is trimmed to the original width of the magnetic tape. After the first piece of splicing tape is carefully removed from the oxide side of the damaged magnetic tape, the resulting magnetic tape is then ready to be placed into a recorder for playback.