Sony ULH Sticky!!??

T

technoplayer

Recovering Gear-aholic
I picked up a new reel to reel and went to my tape archives and loaded up some old music on SONY ULH-7-550-BC. I have my tapes stored in the plastic bags in the original boxes in the house ( climate controlled). Well, after a minute or two, the tape started SQUEALING...i.e. sticky shed on the stationary parts. I picked up a huge amount of shed, especially along the edges. I cleaned it all up arnd tried it again, and got the same result: gunk.
I tried it on a different machine, one I've had for years, and ...same result. I 've had these tapes for probably 20 years, and although I have not listened to them for perhaps 5 years, I did not expect them to go stick shed on me.
I have not seen any specific listings of the Sony tape going bad. Anybody know anything about bad Sony tape??
 
I once had a huge collection of Sony PR-150 tapes manufactured in the early 70's. As of last year, every single one of those tapes played back with no issues (a little bit if shed from each tape, but nothing that would impact playback or wasn't cleanable with a single swab.)

I have no experience with the ULH run from Sony. So sorry, but that's the most I can contribute here.
 
Well....crap. Thanks for the confirmation. At least I know what I have to do (bake) if I ever want to recover the content on these. I guess at this point I need to do something I have put off, which is to pull the numerous boxes of hundreds of tapes I have stored in the closet and cull thru them for what is definably "good" and what is probably sticky, and decide what to do with them. I suspect than I will soon be in posession of scores or empty plastic reels and tape boxes. Oh well....
 
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