Ideas on how to get audio off carts without actually playing them in a cart machine.

I have four broadcast carts (mono), from the late 60s when I was working at a local station here in NYC. Two are 5 min, the others 1 min. I have no idea what’s on them -- the labels having long since vanished -- but I suspect the longer ones may contain some special material I wrote and produced at the time. I’m in the process of trying to digitally archive as much of my work as possible. I have a plan to try and get the audio off these carts and I’d like some comments and suggestions. First though, it’s impractical for me to even think of using a cart machine. I know these old machines show up for sale or auction every so often, but even if I could afford one (I’m semi-retired, on a budget), it wouldn’t make sense to get one just for four tapes that would never be played again. Besides, the carts themselves may be damaged a bit. I have a reel-to-reel deck that someone gave me (2 trk, stereo) that I will be using to archive various reels I also have (all sizes, including 10.5 which I would spool off onto smaller reels). I’m thinking that if I can pull the cart tape out of the carts onto a reel in the proper direction, there should be no reason why the reel deck’s heads should not pick up the signal (assuming there’s enough of it left on the tape). The tricky part is figuring out where to cut the loop. My thought is to pull enough out and hand pull it past the heads until I hear the cue tone -- I want to avoid cutting the loop in the middle of content. It might also be possible, if I pull out enough of the loop and rig up some “posts” and thread it correctly, to simply let the deck’s capstan move the loop assuming it can maintain the 7.5 ips speed. Has anyone done anything like this before? TIA for any ideas. Marshall

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