Re: Tape shredding/ signal loss. HELP!

On Aug 30, 12:02 pm, gb <g...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Analog tape has a usable shelf life of about 10-12 years before the
binder, starts to dry out.

Nearly any tape made before about 1970 is still good. Sure, it'll shed
a little oxide, but that's just considered normal wear and tear. Most
of the tape made from the mid 1970s, to the mid 1980s developed sticky
shed which made a mess, but was fixable with baking.

It's a molecular thing. The tape doesn't absorb water and get sticky,
the binder starts to break down. Baking raises the temperature to the
point where the (pardon my lack of accurate chemistry terminolgy)
stuff in the binder recombines and it becomes what it used to be.

According to Bill Lund, a former 3M tape chemist, baking makes their
tapes that have become sticky good as new (less anything that's rubbed
off of course) and it will last for another ten years before it needs
baking again. I don't know that this has been proven in practice. Most
people bake a tape before playing it for presumably the last time when
making a transfer.

.

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