Several months ago, I had posted a thread about what appeared to be like sticky shed I was having with a box of 996 pancakes that I bought. I had noted that there was mostly white crud and long, thread-like strings. Not the usual brown gunk.
Have been very busy and haven't had time to mess with it since then, until yesterday. Having thought about it for a long time, I thought I'd run a reel through the Revox again to see what happened. Used a reel that had already been through once. Cleaned heads, guides, etc. thoroughly before loading up the tape. Ran it through at 15 ips (to get it over with quickly), and stopped it three times, loosened the tape and checked the heads/guides, etc.
The results: This time through, there was no squealing toward the end of the reel, and there was very, very little build up, if any, until the last 5 minutes of the reel. All the build up was white, filamentous, and there were a few of the thread-like strings that I got the first time that I ran this reel through. I took a photo of the erase head, which was the most affected. See the included photo, the arrows point out the threads and blob of white stuff.
Unless I don't fully understand sticky shed, this doesn't look like sticky shed to me. Do any of you have any ideas what it could be? And, since there appears to have been improvement on the second pass through the machine, do you think it could be cleared up by somehow cleaning the tape?
Have been very busy and haven't had time to mess with it since then, until yesterday. Having thought about it for a long time, I thought I'd run a reel through the Revox again to see what happened. Used a reel that had already been through once. Cleaned heads, guides, etc. thoroughly before loading up the tape. Ran it through at 15 ips (to get it over with quickly), and stopped it three times, loosened the tape and checked the heads/guides, etc.
The results: This time through, there was no squealing toward the end of the reel, and there was very, very little build up, if any, until the last 5 minutes of the reel. All the build up was white, filamentous, and there were a few of the thread-like strings that I got the first time that I ran this reel through. I took a photo of the erase head, which was the most affected. See the included photo, the arrows point out the threads and blob of white stuff.
Unless I don't fully understand sticky shed, this doesn't look like sticky shed to me. Do any of you have any ideas what it could be? And, since there appears to have been improvement on the second pass through the machine, do you think it could be cleared up by somehow cleaning the tape?