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Little Weekend Tape Project

xlbee

xlbee

PIONEERFREQ
Subscriber
Little Weekend Project (Mmmm, Baked Tape!)

A close friend asked me to transfer some old 2 track safety masters to digital so I had a look this weekend. They were recorded in 87 and sure enough on Ampex 456, one of the dreaded "sticky shed" tapes. A short test on the RTR confirmed my suspicions.

Time to bake! So, I pulled out my food dehydrator, oven thermometer, and a rheostat (my dehydrator doesn’t have a temperature control) to kludge together a baking setup. I baked at 130 degrees for 4 hours and let it cool slowly. The result was a successful transfer. My friend was very happy. Two more tapes to go...

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I didnt know you could do this. I read the sticky on this topic("a Sticky (tape) subject")...and as usual I realize every day I have something to learn...good information in there. Seems like you want to get that music recorded onto something else after baking, yes? Only get one play or so out of it after that?
 
geartech said:
I didnt know you could do this. I read the sticky on this topic("a Sticky (tape) subject")...and as usual I realize every day I have something to learn...good information in there. Seems like you want to get that music recorded onto something else after baking, yes? Only get one play or so out of it after that?
Click to expand...

Correct. The idea is to make it playable so it can be transferred to another format. Articles I have read say you can play the tape for up to a month after baking.

This is a GREAT link on the subject (no affiliation):

http://www.tangible-technology.com/tape/baking1.html
 
You're a good man to help out a friend!

When they went back to remaster "Hotel California", all the original tapes had sticky shed. They crossed their fingers and popped them in the oven. They were able to successfully transfer them.
 
DougMac said:
You're a good man to help out a friend!
Click to expand...

Yeah but I wasn't sure that I would actually be helping so I made sure he read all of the articles that I read before I went ahead. I wanted him to understand that there would be some risk. In the end, it worked and he's very happy. Hopefully the two remaining work as well. Fingers crossed...
 
Wow, you baked them for 4 hours at 130 degrees, how did they taste?

Doesn't this make the tape brittle?
 
xlbee said:
A close friend asked me to transfer some old 2 track safety masters to digital so I had a look this weekend. They were recorded in 87 and sure enough on Ampex 456, one of the dreaded "sticky shed" tapes. A short test on the RTR confirmed my suspicions.

Time to bake! So, I pulled out my food dehydrator, oven thermometer, and a rheostat (my dehydrator doesn’t have a temperature control) to kludge together a baking setup. I baked at 130 degrees for 4 hours and let it cool slowly. The result was a successful transfer. My friend was very happy. Two more tapes to go...
Click to expand...

This is why last year I sold all four of my open reel decks and my 200+ tapes on Craigslist. I put together a T-chart of "reasons to just let it go" and "reasons to keep it". "Let it go" won.

If I ever end up with a serious shedding problem with my cassettes, I'll dump the Nak and the Pioneer CT-F1250 as well. So far so good though.
 
chard306 said:
Wow, you baked them for 4 hours at 130 degrees, how did they taste?

Doesn't this make the tape brittle?
Click to expand...

Well, my friend Dave said it was pretty tasty!

I should have specified that 130 degrees is Fahrenheit. There are places in the US that have reached that temperature in the summer. So, it's not really that hot. Just enough to drive the moisture out of the adhesive. According to the article at the link posted above, the idea is just to make them playable so they can be transferred. Repeated baking isn't a good idea.
 
xlbee said:
Correct. The idea is to make it playable so it can be transferred to another format. Articles I have read say you can play the tape for up to a month after baking.
Click to expand...

I did a lot of reading on the subject before I sold all my open reel stuff. Like you said, the baking works, but only temporarily, giving enough time to transfer to another medium. This assumes the content is worth it. Unless we are talking rare, one-off recordings, it usually isn't. And a lot of my tapes were back coated, exacerbating the problem significantly. I also had 30 or so NOS tapes that I can only assume were more than likely no good.

I had to do a lot of soul searching before I cut bait on all my open reel stuff. About 100 of the tapes I had had been recorded in Vietnam during the war by a soldier that worked at the military radio station there. He had transferred vinyl to tape as much as he could. But the whole collection was really an "interesting curiosity" more than anything else. And at the end of the day I really didn't play the tapes much, partly because the sound quality just wasn't that great at non-dolby 3 3/4 speed from a late 1960's Teac deck.

I am under the impression that there are still people who use open reel and actually buy new (not NOS) tape. I also get the drift that new tape is prohibitively expensive unless you have a compelling reason to purchase it. I kinda miss the old open reel gear, but sort of in the way I miss my vintage Akai 8-track recorder. But I know that if I had kept it I would have spent a lot of time trying to make it work. At this point the time is more well spent trying to get Adobe Premiere Elements to work. That is almost a full time job right now. :(
 
Ampex 456 and dehydrator

I too have this sticky problem with my 456s. I thought something was wrong with my R2 R motors .The thing is that whatever I have on my tapes , I have on vinyl. Its just that sometimes I love seeing those 10 inch reels turn! I have a dehydrator , just didnt know about this technique so thanks for this post..I will give the procedure a try. By The Way ..I have some new old stock 456s..I guess they too would have the same stickiness ? Comments?
 
RobRoy said:
I did a lot of reading on the subject before I sold all my open reel stuff. Like you said, the baking works, but only temporarily, giving enough time to transfer to another medium. This assumes the content is worth it. Unless we are talking rare, one-off recordings, it usually isn't. And a lot of my tapes were back coated, exacerbating the problem significantly. I also had 30 or so NOS tapes that I can only assume were more than likely no good.

I had to do a lot of soul searching before I cut bait on all my open reel stuff. About 100 of the tapes I had had been recorded in Vietnam during the war by a soldier that worked at the military radio station there. He had transferred vinyl to tape as much as he could. But the whole collection was really an "interesting curiosity" more than anything else. And at the end of the day I really didn't play the tapes much, partly because the sound quality just wasn't that great at non-dolby 3 3/4 speed from a late 1960's Teac deck.

I am under the impression that there are still people who use open reel and actually buy new (not NOS) tape. I also get the drift that new tape is prohibitively expensive unless you have a compelling reason to purchase it. I kinda miss the old open reel gear, but sort of in the way I miss my vintage Akai 8-track recorder. But I know that if I had kept it I would have spent a lot of time trying to make it work. At this point the time is more well spent trying to get Adobe Premiere Elements to work. That is almost a full time job right now. :(
Click to expand...

I totally hear you! If you're not using and loving the vintage stuff you have, then there is no point of it taking up your time and space.
 
paulram said:
I too have this sticky problem with my 456s. I thought something was wrong with my R2 R motors .The thing is that whatever I have on my tapes , I have on vinyl. Its just that sometimes I love seeing those 10 inch reels turn! I have a dehydrator , just didnt know about this technique so thanks for this post..I will give the procedure a try. By The Way ..I have some new old stock 456s..I guess they too would have the same stickiness ? Comments?
Click to expand...

Hmmm... According to what I've read, it's moisture that causes the problem so if they are still sealed, they may be fine. Plus, there are certain tapes from certian periods that are known to exhibit the issue.

Read the link near the beginning of the thread and this one too:

http://recordist.com/ampex/docs/misc/sticky-shed.html

(No affiliation)
 
xlbee said:
I totally hear you! If you're not using and loving the vintage stuff you have, then there is no point of it taking up your time and space.
Click to expand...
Problem was that I did love the stuff. It was stuff I only dreamed about owning "back in the day". When we moved I just had to make some tough decisions about what to keep and where I needed to move on.

As another poster mentioned, it was just cool to watch those big reels turn. :)
 
xlbee said:
Hmmm... According to what I've read, it's moisture that causes the problem so if they are still sealed, they may be fine. Plus, there are certain tapes from certian periods that are known to exhibit the issue.

Read the link near the beginning of the thread and this one too:

http://recordist.com/ampex/docs/misc/sticky-shed.html

(No affiliation)
Click to expand...
I've baked lot of tapes, and I can tell you for a fact that NOS Ampex 456 is usually sticky. The celephane wrappers are not sufficient to keep the moisture-out.

Also, in my experience the baking lasts for about 3 weeks. After that, you must re-bake. And I have tapes that I have re-backed several times, and it does not appear to do damage to Ampex 456.
 
goldear said:
I've baked lot of tapes, and I can tell you for a fact that NOS Ampex 456 is usually sticky. The celephane wrappers are not sufficient to keep the moisture-out.

Also, in my experience the baking lasts for about 3 weeks. After that, you must re-bake. And I have tapes that I have re-backed several times, and it does not appear to do damage to Ampex 456.
Click to expand...

And experience means you've learned from your mistakes so your input is well worth heeding next to my novice speculation. Thanks for the input!
 
More War Stories

RobRoy said:
I had to do a lot of soul searching before I cut bait on all my open reel stuff. About 100 of the tapes I had had been recorded in Vietnam during the war by a soldier that worked at the military radio station there. He had transferred vinyl to tape as much as he could. But the whole collection was really an "interesting curiosity" more than anything else. And at the end of the day I really didn't play the tapes much, partly because the sound quality just wasn't that great at non-dolby 3 3/4 speed from a late 1960's Teac deck.

(
Click to expand...

I had a friend offer me her deceased dad's Akai 4 channel deck. When I went to pick it up, there were about 50 tapes that came with it. Her dad had made them in Korea in the '70's. From the evidence I have, there were "hobby" clubs where you could go and dub tapes. I've got reels and reels of pristine BASF tape with atrocious 3 3/4 dubs of elevator music, all meticulously documented in a notebook.

I don't record to RTR much any more. I could offer them for sale, but that doesn't seem right. I've also thought about archiving some of my 78's to tape, but I can't bring myself to recording over the tapes.
 
DougMac said:
I had a friend offer me her deceased dad's Akai 4 channel deck. When I went to pick it up, there were about 50 tapes that came with it. Her dad had made them in Korea in the '70's. From the evidence I have, there were "hobby" clubs where you could go and dub tapes. I've got reels and reels of pristine BASF tape with atrocious 3 3/4 dubs of elevator music, all meticulously documented in a notebook.

I don't record to RTR much any more. I could offer them for sale, but that doesn't seem right. I've also thought about archiving some of my 78's to tape, but I can't bring myself to recording over the tapes.
Click to expand...

And the thing is, you could transfer them to digital to free up the tapes but that definitely takes time. Between setting up the tape baking kludge and the laptop and playing through both songs on the tape to get recording levels correct and doing the recording and verifying the recording and and and... I was surprised how much time it took to record two 8 minute songs. In this case though I didn't mind because it's for a good friend and in the end, I don't have to store the tape or the digital files.

On a side note, it's interesting how AK threads like this one can sometimes "wander off in their own direction"...
 
DougMac said:
I had a friend offer me her deceased dad's Akai 4 channel deck. When I went to pick it up, there were about 50 tapes that came with it. Her dad had made them in Korea in the '70's. From the evidence I have, there were "hobby" clubs where you could go and dub tapes. I've got reels and reels of pristine BASF tape with atrocious 3 3/4 dubs of elevator music, all meticulously documented in a notebook.

I don't record to RTR much any more. I could offer them for sale, but that doesn't seem right. I've also thought about archiving some of my 78's to tape, but I can't bring myself to recording over the tapes.
Click to expand...
That is actually very similar to how I got most of my stuff. And the line I can really relate to is this one: atrocious 3 3/4 dubs of elevator music, all meticulously documented in a notebook.

It reminds me of when videocassettes were first offered to the public. The idea of owning a movie, or be able to record a TV show was sooooo Buck Rogers. Heck, a blank one hour tape went for $20. that is 1977 dollars!

I had one customer that, at that price, had recorded every single episode of Charlies Angels off the air. :)
 
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