Tape recorder with live chassis
That machine should absolutely NOT be live chassis, they were typically double insulated to avoid earth loops with the (typically grounded) hifi amps they were used with, but if there is significant current to chassis you need to find it and fix it. 

I would note that given a high impedance meter you can sometimes measure a fair voltage to chassis even with no real fault due to the coupling to the interwinding screen, so it is worth using an old school meter of the 20k/Volt sort rather then the modern DMM with Mohm input when checking this.