Thought I'd post this here, as I don't know if it's been covered before (and I'm too lazy to search!)
I bought a dirt cheap Pioneer RT-909 machine off CL this past weekend with a box of tapes. One tape was a NOS Ampex 20/20+ back coated tape. Yes, I know, neither the machine nor the tape is worthy of a post here. But I digress.
I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS want my tapes to be in a played condition, I never store them FF or REW, as the tape packs poorly. So of course all 9 tapes were in a poorly wound condition, so I played them all through. Several were older non back coated tapes, and they barely shed anything. Then I got to the back coated tapes. Here's what happened most of the way through the NOS Ampex tape... THe pix shows about 1/2 the oxide that flaked off the tape! I've never seen one this bad before.
The cure (and yes, save for the fact that I think there are probably chunks of tape sections that won't record anything) is a gen-yew-wine RUNCO food dehydrator. I'd type a pile about tape baking, but there's a great writeup here:
http://www.tangible-technology.com/tape/baking1.html
Eddie Ciletti is a studio guru. Never met him, but I've emailed with him years ago. Super nice guy.
I'm going to bake that Ampex tape on the weekend along with a used sister roll that also shed the same way, and will post the results. My guess it should come back to usable condition..
I bought a dirt cheap Pioneer RT-909 machine off CL this past weekend with a box of tapes. One tape was a NOS Ampex 20/20+ back coated tape. Yes, I know, neither the machine nor the tape is worthy of a post here. But I digress.
I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS want my tapes to be in a played condition, I never store them FF or REW, as the tape packs poorly. So of course all 9 tapes were in a poorly wound condition, so I played them all through. Several were older non back coated tapes, and they barely shed anything. Then I got to the back coated tapes. Here's what happened most of the way through the NOS Ampex tape... THe pix shows about 1/2 the oxide that flaked off the tape! I've never seen one this bad before.
The cure (and yes, save for the fact that I think there are probably chunks of tape sections that won't record anything) is a gen-yew-wine RUNCO food dehydrator. I'd type a pile about tape baking, but there's a great writeup here:
http://www.tangible-technology.com/tape/baking1.html
Eddie Ciletti is a studio guru. Never met him, but I've emailed with him years ago. Super nice guy.
I'm going to bake that Ampex tape on the weekend along with a used sister roll that also shed the same way, and will post the results. My guess it should come back to usable condition..