Hi there,
I just both a pair of vintage brand new SONY SLH 1100m back coated open
reel tapes on the eBay.
Both tapes get stuck on my Akai GX-625 deck. The behavior is really
bad.
I did not try to play back. Only try was a fast-forward and a rewind.
A closer look after the first fast-forward try to a whipping behavior
revealed that the tapes are depositing kind of a glue on the deck metal
cylinder guides. Fortunatelly, no contacts with the heads were made.
This happened to both tapes. I cleaned the deck metal parts with
alcohol
and then I try using a Maxell EE 3600 XLII.
Maxell open reel tape works smooth and steadly like a piece of cake.
Does anyone happen to know why these SONY tapes have this crappy
glue stuff on the magnetic side ? Should I throw them in the trash ?
You have almost certainly encountered the problem known as "sticky
shed". Due to some problems in the binder formulation used in making
many types of tape back in the 1980s, the binder soaks up atmospheric
moisture and becomes gummy, and the oxide layer can shed off.
Sticky-shedding tapes which have significant recordings on them can be
"baked" in order to stabilize the binder. You can then play the tapes
back and transfer the recording to a more stable medium. The tapes
will deteriorate again after a while, unfortunately.
Frankly, I wouldn't plan on using "vintage" tapes exhibiting
sticky-shed syndrome for any new recordings, even if the tapes are
new-in-box. The risk of losing the new recording permanently would be
too great.
For further information, see
http://recordist.com/ampex/docs/misc/sticky-shed.html
http://audio-restoration.com/baking.php
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3941/stickyshed.html
What are the best 10.5" tapes still available out there that will not
make
any damage to my beloved Akai ?
It's still possible to purchase newly-manufactured reel-to-reel tapes
in that size. The Quantegy company (formerly a division of Ampex) is
apparently the only company in the world still making reel-to-reel.
They have a couple of different formulations (406/407 is said to be a
general-purpose budget formulation, and 456 is their "Grand Master"
high-end tape).
See
http://www.quantegy.com (heavily Flash-based, unfortunately). You
can buy directly through their on-line store, and I imagine that
various Internet merchants carry their products as well.
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page:
http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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