Quote:
Originally Posted by jlb2
Not cleaning actually. What these tapes need is baking: the problem <ith EIAJ tapes has been found a long time ago to be sticky shed syndrome. The urethane binder loses its bonds which are replaced by water molecules, softening it enough to shed and stick on the transport with a horrible squealing noise.
If your tapes do not squeal, don't bother. If they do, you can "bake" them to 55°C for the time it takes to remove the water (it can be a day or two for a 1/2" tape), after which it is playable for a few weeks, and then progressively reverts to its shedding condition, but not worse than it was before. A tape can be baked several times, so put the tape back into storage when you have made a copy, for future use. There are several ways to "bake" a tape, and a kitchen oven is most definitely not one of them, it cannot regulate at such a low temperature and is perfectly able to melt the plastic, tape and reel alike. You can use a food dehydrator, or a laboratory oven, or even a cardboard box, a hairdryer and an industrial thermostat - which is what I do and it works well.
BTW the meter doing strange things at power-up is very common for machines of this age, it doesn't imply that there is a problem.
|
We have some shedding Reel to Reel tapes. What I've been doing post-baking is sealing them in heavy-duty freezer bags with a pouch of desiccant. Keeping the moisture out as much as possible is preferable to re-baking.
Silica gel cat litter is cheap and works great for this purpose - or you can re-use those little pouches you sometimes get in things you buy, but be sure to bake them too if they have sat around a while or they'll be saturated with moisture already and won't do any good.
Just be sure to make a small cloth/paper towel pouch or a smaller plastic bag in which you've pricked a bunch of holes with a pin so the crystals don't get all over your tape. Anything vapour permeable but not too porous is fine.