Hi Maybe with a good analog recording and a lot of signal processing. The high frequency loss will be quite high. depending on the tape it self, the depth of recording may make the difference. If it is recorded well through the magnetic media, there may be enough signal. The main issue is that you'd most likely need to make several passes to be able to recover the high frequency information above the noise level. This would require maybe doing 180 degrees several times before unrolling the next 180 degress of tape. One would also need to keep track of how far each layer was because the print through of the next layer would compete with the one your trying to read. One moght also go to one of the newer moer sensitive magnetic sensing methods used in current hard disk to increase the signal to noise. It would be a lot of work but I think with a budget of $250K I could read one. Additional reads would be at $10K each. Dwight