456 tape New-ish?

[analog aaron]

Hey Guys,

I have a few rolls of 1/4" quantegy 456 tape I bought about ten years ago (at a place called "Acts Audio" in orlando. ) The place is still there and selling cassettes and some reel to reel but of course no longer selling 456. I think I bought like 5 rolls altogether and 1 still unopened. 3 of the rolls have bits and fragments, voice test recordings. a minute of this , a minute of that. a bunch of nothing then maybe an occational drum track here and there- basically nothing I want to keep. I think the 4th one had some 2 track stereo recording of my old band. That recording is really loud and obnoxious. Probably over saturated the tracks considering I didn't know what I was doing (still don't-ha.) Stuff I was doing trying to see if the old teac I had at the time was still operational. I don't want to keep any of the material on the tapes, but I was wondering if I erased the tapes and rerecorded on them, would the sound be any good? I don't remember storing the tapes in a hot evironment over the years.
A

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Bulk erasing would be your best bet as they work to a higher level of erasure and don't depend on the alignment of heads being "on" from one machine to the next. Erasing over the tapes via the normal recording process should do a reasonable job...even of erasing those loud passages you were concerned about.

As to whether the tapes will still be "good", is anyones guess. The odds of them needing a bake are probably better then 75%, I would guess.

Try one and see.

Cheers!