jamesperrett
Active member
Used Maxell tape in those days and it has held up (except for some sticky splices I can hear as they approach.)
The 80-8 was used with Ampex, which I hear horror stories about; hopefully this won't be my experience.
As you say, Maxell tapes hold up well (as do BASF and some, but not all, Agfa and 3M tapes). Unless the Ampex tapes date from before about 1975 they're going to need baking. Don't even think about trying them on your machine without baking as you'll then be spending the rest of the day cleaning up the mess! It used to be that baking at 120 degrees F for 4 hours would be enough but these days tapes seem to require longer baking times - one archivist I know reckons that some tapes can take up to a week to restore to a properly playable state although I tend to go for about 8 hours followed by a slow cooling off time.