Green gunk on capstan roller!

LupoTB

New Member
Hello all,

I have a GX-77 that has been running great for years now. I clean the heads regularly. Today when the tape auto-reversed it played side one backwards!! Investigation revealed the tape was getting pulled inwards by the capstan roller. That roller had weird green gunk in a strip towards the back of the roller. The other one was clean. I cleaned it off and all is well. But what is that gunk? It's very green. I only use BASF tapes but have never had a problem before. The only thing new is I got 3 NOS tapes LH TP18 that I've run a couple of times. The heads are fine and there's no gunk on the pinch rollers. And it's green! Anyone have any ideas?
 
Yep, I've had the same thing happen to me with some BASF tapes. The tape itself is fine but the LEADER TAPE has gone sticky and is gumming up your machine. BASF uses green leader on one end of the tape and red on the other, and on certain tapes both of the leaders go sticky / gummy. I have a bunch of top quality BASF tapes here that have bad leaders which had to be removed and replaced with new ones.

When your deck reversed itself the green leader probably ran through the roller and got all caught up / pulled off by it. Remove the tape and run the leader tape through your fingers, it'll probably feel like it's binding and come off in chunks. Again the tape itself is fine, it's just the leader that is defective so don't trash the tape.
 
I'm just wondering if the green leader tape thing would have been an obvious observation prior to posting a thread like this.
It's not like there is a green goo monster lurking around just waiting to gum up the capstan roller.
Whatever is passing through the tape transport, must then be something to do with the tape, no ?
Pics would be handy too.
 
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