Fixed! Once I repaired the broken switch, it just needed a new belt, slight motor adjustment, and a good cleaning. Glad I kept poking around in there. I didn’t have any blank cassettes and was very surprised to find that they had a pack at the corner Walgreens. Crazy high school flashback opening it up — I probably made a thousand mix tapes back then.
Made a quick test recording of piano > norns running compass > cassette, and then played the recording back into norns to record to tape. The ins and outs on the Realistic are all mono and I messed up my adapters somewhere because I got piano and reverb, but no compass. Oh well.
We also had a very pretty sunrise this morning, here’s some not pictures of it:
