So I was down to twenty-seven tapes…

Or not.

The next tape’s box said “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” on the spine, and it contained a neatly-typed list saying it had Firesign Theatre’s “The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra” and “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers,” followed by “Monty Python’s Previous Record” and “Another Monty Python Record.” This list was accurate, and I already had all of those but “Giant Rat” in my MP3 collection.

So I recorded that in Audacity, but the quality was pretty bad.

On a whim, I tried the head demagnetizer again, and this time it worked a whole hell of a lot better. I must have not done it right before. The sound quality went from lousy to very decent. I re-recorded “Giant Rat,” and got a pretty clean copy.

But that means I may want to (eventually) give the last half-dozen tapes I did another go, and see if I can do better by them. I’ve fished them out of the discard heap and set them aside for later.

For now, though, I have twenty-six more tapes — half the original fifty-two — left that I haven’t done anything with yet.