Ditch it. Don’t keep it and bake it repeatedly. Fools errand, bad idea, etc. the only reason to bake tape is to transfer material off the tape. And you typically cannot tell if tape is bad until you thread it up and run it. Sometimes you’ll know right away, like squealing, or sometimes a full servo tension machine will just act weird, jerking action on the tension arms, that kind of thing…and then of course in extreme cases the oxide will just scrape right off the base onto your tape path in a pile of zombie skin goo. But almost always it looks okay to the eye. But if you ever get ready to thread it and anything flakes off or it seems tacky to itself, bake it, transfer it, dump it, or if there’s no material on it, trash it. That’s why it’s important to know what tapes are almost always bad, and those that are suspect. No sense damaging your machine if it’s known garbage. And unfortunately the list is growing all the time. Late Ampex branded or Quantegy branded 499 has always been pretty safe, but I’ve got some 1” Ampex 499 that squeals, and some 1/2” Quantegy 499 that does the same thing.
