...so I got all these tapes...

[technoplayer]

Once again I broke my vow and bought another tape machine.. an Otari 5050 1/2" 4 track, and it came with 24 reels of tape.

Most of it appears to be Ampex 456 which a few reels are Quantegy GP9. I say "appears to be" as I am going under the assumption that the tape is on the original reels, if not in the actual original box.
Fourteen of the reels came in two Ampex boxes...seven reels to a box...and the box has codes on it, as well as every reel having what looks to be a date code label.

If I interpret the sticky shed discussions correctly, the GP9 ought to be good. As far as the 456, I know at least the reel that was on the machine when I tested it is sticky, as it was bad enough to cause slow fast winding to a crawl....and had the characteristic 'squeal". What i do not know is how to determine (by the date code on the reels) or otherwise which ones may be good, or if I now have a large collection of potentially empty 1/2" reels.

I have seen that there are certain dates and manufacturing locations (Opelika vs Redwood City) that make a difference. Any general or specific rules on which dates are particularly bad for sticky and which may have a chance of being good? I read thru the sticky thread but still not sure


My thought.......if i fast wind the reels (lifters up/ not over the heads!) and do not see any buildup/ shedding on the guides or lifters, would this be a fair test of stickiness?? On my now landfilled Sony ULH collection I know I could not have made it a quarter way thru a reel that way without stalling the transport.

Any thoughts on this approach??

 

[jpmorris]

If you believe the date codes are correct, I understand 1995 onwards is good - 1994 and earlier is suspect. If I remember correctly, some 1994 ones are good, but some are, some aren't. I just stick with 1995 as being good.

Ampex format is something like YYDDD, where I believe DDD is the day in the year that batch was made. For example, 97123 would be sometime in May 1997.

 

[technoplayer]

Dang... I know there is some 91/92 in that batch of tapes, but also some as late as 1998.

Again, I am assuming that the tapes is would back on the original reels.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

My thought.......if i fast wind the reels (lifters up/ not over the heads!) and do not see any buildup/ shedding on the guides or lifters, would this be a fair test of stickiness?? On my now landfilled Sony ULH collection I know I could not have made it a quarter way thru a reel that way without stalling the transport.

Any thoughts on this approach??

That sounds like a fair approach. No massive dirt build up and no obvious speed reduction on the wind...along with no weird squeaking, should be a good sign of no sticky shed.

Cheers!

 

[mdainsd]

Thats how I do it. I know the time to wind a known good tape, then compare it with the tape in question. More than a few seconds difference and I pitch them. I read that some concider the baking process a "fix" to make sticky/shed tapes servicable again. I dont see it that way. I see it as a method to hpefully get ONE more playback from the reel. I use all vintage tape and date codes aside, i have never got a reel of 456 that wasnt stcky/shed. Also i have never got a reel of 499 that wasnt fine. Could be coincidence, but who knows.

 

[technoplayer]

Ok.
After a good cleanup of all tape contact surfaces, I have been running my initial record & play tests using one of the GP9 reels, which has run all the way thru a least twice. Absolutely no gunk deposits anywhere, so I have a tape I can baseline with.
I am going to run thru everything that is on a GP9 reel first and then start with the 456, newest date first and work backwards. See if I can find a date when things go to crap.

 

[Beck]

All of the info you need is in my Sticky Shed Tape Thread sticky at the top of the Analog Only main page, though granted it’s gotten quite long and takes a while to get through. What JP said about avoiding any Ampex 456 before 1995 is correct… however (And it’s a big however) if your tape is unsealed all bets are off on what era or even what type of tape you have on a given reel. For this reason the date codes are really only useful for NOS sealed tape. We might safely assume in this case that all the tapes are Ampex because if I understand correctly all the reels are branded Ampex.

What we cannot assume is that the previous owner kept the tapes on their original reels. In fact, with that many tapes it’s quite common for tapes to get mixed around from reel to reel during projects. The larger and busier the studio the more common this was/is.

In short, the dates on the reel, box and case of unsealed tape can’t give you the final word.

Testing each tape is also problematic because sticky shed symptoms range from mild to severe. You may have a tape that appears to pass the test. That is, it doesn’t squeal or cause the transport to slow or stop. However, mild sticky shed will cause substandard performance particularly in high frequency response. So you may have a tape that runs ok mechanically speaking, but it doesn’t deliver sound wise. And if it has sticky shed at all it will continue to deteriorate.

You could ask the previous owner about his tape management habits and whether he can tell you with any certainty that he always kept the tape he was working with on the original reel. But then you’re still dealing with used tape and you don’t know how used unless you ask him that as well.

I wouldn’t throw the tape away just yet until you’ve talked to him/her. Dealing with used tape is a tricky business, but in a case like this the history of how the tape was used from the previous owner (If they bought it new) is really your best bet. If he has to think about it or is only “pretty sure” you’ll never be 100% sure… or even 10% sure for that matter.

EDIT: One more thing... be sure to thoroughly clean the tape path between each reel while testing. Severe sticky shed tape will contaminate perfectly good tape with a glue-like substance and particles that will cause dropouts on otherwise good tape. And you can safely throw away the obviously bad tape that slows or stops the transport. Keep the reels so you can buy good pancakes of something else to fill them.

The date when things go crap is already known... anything before the last quarter of 1994 (But we say 1995 to be on the safe side)

 

[technoplayer]

Thanks Beck. I will read thru the sticky-sticky thouroghly.
Unfortunately, the previous owner is...... unavailable. A year or two back there was a well publicised double homicide and subsequent manhunt that originated at a local recording studio.
I purchased the machine and tapes by responding to a Craigslist ad, which as it turns out was placed by the father of one of the victims. He is clearing out some of the gear from the studio. So all I can do is go by what I have in hand. Some of the tapes include dated track sheets from various years, some of them indicating 8 tracks on the tape. (There is one marked "Stevie Ray"..........dare I even hope for a Stevie Ray Vaughn studio tape???) obviously not recorded on this 4 track machine.
The 7 reel boxes are from a local audio supplier, so I would presume ( that word again) that they were buying and working with new tape...at the time. Again, boxes may not match contents. Maybe if i am lucky the previous owner already weeded out the sticky stuff...

 

[technoplayer]

I ran the first tape from the 456 group...code on the reel is 92226.. which going by the info above is the 226 day of 1992.

Made it about 30 seconds into fast wind when it suddenly and dramatically slowed down and started screeching. Moments later I had to stop the tape and the guides were covered with crap.

One bad one down

 

[technoplayer]

More results: Runnignthe tape end to end at fast wind with the lifters up. The "good" tape would up at full speed...the fast wind on the Otari spools up like an aircraft engine at takeoff.
The "bad" stuff did the opposite, running it to a dead halt within 15 or 20 seconds.

Again my presumption is the tape is on the original dated reels, which I still think ought to be right for tape that looks to have been recorded on for only one set of sessions then archived.

>>> date 96135 (1996) and in an Ampex box labelled as Quantegy/ Opelika: Good tape, no shedding >>>>>Note: this Ampex reel looks different that the Redwood ones (pictures coming)
>>> date 96262 (1996) same as above...good tape
>>> date 91200 (1991) BAD BAD BAD. I have never seen stuff like this, even with some of my 1/4" old tape. The tape was sticking to itself coming off the reel. I could actually *feel* the grunge of the tape running it between my fingers. Made a mess of the guides in short order. Textbook bad tape.

>>> date 92083 (1992) Bad, but not as bad as the 91 tape. Still junk
>>> date 95229 (1995) Good. A few oxide 'flakes' but not sticky stuff.


I have a lot more to run, but since I fully clean up all the guides after each tape run, I have to space them out.

 

[trancedental]

Did Quantegy change the front box logo & design around this period when they took over Ampex? I notice some of the last Ampex boxes have the black box logo towards the bottom & light blue logos on reels instead of Blue / Black bands?

Don't know exactly if this is the time that the sticky shed ended but I've noticed that the Blue logo reels & bottom box Logos seem OK when I've used them?

 

[jpmorris]

The ones with the logo in the middle of the box are usually bad. Logo at the bottom is late era Ampex, and they are all good, AFAIK. Reels with the open logo silkscreened onto the flange are also later tapes - ones where it's a sticker with a black background - I have one from 1995 which I believe is good (but ought to test!) and all the others of that type were bad and reused for pancakes.

EDIT: Also, if it has a sticker with a little rainbow pattern, run away.

 

[Beck]

More results: Runnignthe tape end to end at fast wind with the lifters up. The "good" tape would up at full speed...the fast wind on the Otari spools up like an aircraft engine at takeoff.
The "bad" stuff did the opposite, running it to a dead halt within 15 or 20 seconds.

Again my presumption is the tape is on the original dated reels, which I still think ought to be right for tape that looks to have been recorded on for only one set of sessions then archived.

>>> date 96135 (1996) and in an Ampex box labelled as Quantegy/ Opelika: Good tape, no shedding >>>>>Note: this Ampex reel looks different that the Redwood ones (pictures coming)
>>> date 96262 (1996) same as above...good tape
>>> date 91200 (1991) BAD BAD BAD. I have never seen stuff like this, even with some of my 1/4" old tape. The tape was sticking to itself coming off the reel. I could actually *feel* the grunge of the tape running it between my fingers. Made a mess of the guides in short order. Textbook bad tape.

>>> date 92083 (1992) Bad, but not as bad as the 91 tape. Still junk
>>> date 95229 (1995) Good. A few oxide 'flakes' but not sticky stuff.


I have a lot more to run, but since I fully clean up all the guides after each tape run, I have to space them out.

This is great stuff, and confirms the info in the Sticky-Shed Help Thread. Please feel free to share your findings there when you're all finished, so this info doesn't get lost in the archives.

Did Quantegy change the front box logo & design around this period when they took over Ampex? I notice some of the last Ampex boxes have the black box logo towards the bottom & light blue logos on reels instead of Blue / Black bands?

Don't know exactly if this is the time that the sticky shed ended but I've noticed that the Blue logo reels & bottom box Logos seem OK when I've used them?

Yes... just as JP said, and somewhere lost in this form I've got a post that must be over six years old or so with photos of the good and bad boxes and reels.

I found some other old posts of mine below, but not exactly the one I was looking for. I made the mistake in the first one of linking to eBay images, which of course are now long gone. The second post has a couple pictures of the box styles to avoid for Ampex backcoated tape, like 406/407 and 456/457, etc. Your picture of the reel with the blue silk-screened 456 is early Ampex branded Quantegy right in the transition period after Quantegy acquired Ampex magnetics in 1995. It was the first logo change by Quantegy. Before that you'll only see stickers. Quantegy continued using silk-screening, but the design changed to the Quantegy logo we know today. Quantegy kept the AMPEX brand name on the tapes until 1998, so between 1995 and 1998 we saw various combinations, including Ampex branded reels in Quantegy branded boxes.

Ampex fixed the sticky binder problem in late 1994 before Quantegy took over, so some 1994 vintage Ampex is good and some is not. The box style was also changed by Ampex so the label is across the bottom starting in 1994. If it says made in Opelika Alabama on the back of the box it is good. If it says Redwood City California and is older than 1994 throw the tape away and keep the metal reels for future use. If you see a box of 456 with the label in the middle it's from 1993 and older... back to mid 80's. You may see some of these from very early 1994 as well. Avoid them at all costs. No need to check the date because these are all from the sticky era. All this assuming sealed NOS tape of course. If it's open or so-called one-pass tape you can't be sure what it is.

https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...rong-quantegy-tape-ebay-142663/7/#post1328837

https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...sticky-shed-help-thread-228067/2/#post2667109

 

[jpmorris]

Okay, here are a couple of mine.

First, one of the dreaded rainbow logos:



...note also the hollow '456'. This came in a good box from 1997, but whether this is '97 tape on a 1970s reel or what, I don't know. I bought it off ebay during the tape crisis but never used it.



Next, a Webber test tape. It cost £20 off ebay, and would have been a bargain had it not coated the transport with some horrible white stickyness. (There was me wondering why the 10Khz response was -15dB down...). It was a calculated risk.


...again, note the hollow 406 logo.



This was an empty spool, but there are boxes like this with tape in them. I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it.

 

[technoplayer]

I completed going thru all my 1/2" tapes, so herein I will run down the results. A lot of this data is redundant to all of the other sticky shed stuff out there, but since I had to do do something with the tapes anyway, I ran my own test on all of them.

>>These were all session tapes which were recorded on basically once or maybe mixed down to, and then stored in the plastic bag and original boxes. The provenence of tape to dated reel is somewhat confirmed by the fact that all of the reels save one were in boxes that had the same date code label as the reel in it. I don't have any reason to believe that the tape was spooled onto a different reel.

>> Several of the boxes included detailed track sheets and session notes, with dates to closely match the reel and box dates.

Let me say that I was shocked how bad some of these tapes were. I could tell on the first reels in fast wind when the tape coming off the supply reel trailed up toward the takeup reel instead of cleanly spooling off. After the first few reel of running the tape across the guides and lifters, and then having to clean gunk off everything before the next tape, I modified my approach. For the remainder of the tapes I routed the tape behind the head cover, directly from the supply reel to the takup reel. I propped up the tension arm/ shutoff switch and ran the tape in fast wind, while holding a clean swab on either side of the tape. If the swab came up gunky dirty, I did the "nasty" thing and pinched the tape lightly between two fingers as it passed thru. After a few seconds, my fingers were coated with black brown gunk that looked like molasses. Note that I did this same test with known good tape, and the swab came out clean.

I then took the flanges off the hub, and dumped the bad tape reel by reel into the trash...I did not want this stuff ever getting used. I have dumped old/scrap good tape like this before, and it would easily slide off the reel and drop away as indivdual tape strands. This stuff fell off the reel in chunks that were basically glued together. I had to often use a razor to cut the tape down to the hub, then peel it off. It fell off in solid blocks, not individual strands. It could be peeled off, but came in multi layer segments that felt like rubber.


Bad Tapes (quantity): All on Ampex label style reels
> 89243
> 90278
> 90279
> 90299 (2)
> 90347
> 91035
> 91046
> 91200
> 92080
> 92083
> 92170
> 92226
> 92303
> 92309
> 92321 (2)
> 93033
> 94059
>>>>> one unidentified tape on a Scotch Precision reel.

Good Tapes:
> 95229 Ampex mfg and with Ampex "old" style lable logo
> 96135 In Ampex box and on Ampex "new" screened logo reel, Quantegy (Opelika) mfg
> 96262 In Ampex box and on Ampex "new" screened logo reel, Quantegy (Opelika) mfg
> One Quantegy boxes tape. I do not know how to interpret the code on this one

......fully corresponding to the established time between 1994 and 1995 when the binder problem was resolved, and when mfg moved to the Quantegy factory.
Even after reading thru all of the sticky shed data, this was a valuable hands on lesson for me, which will hopefully serve me in the future in identifying tapes before I buy them. As I noted above, the bad tapes were destroyed. Now I have a two lifetime supply of 1/2" empty reels!

 

[jpmorris]

Quantegy should just be a 4-digit year instead of 2, e.g. 2002123, where '2002' is the year and '123' is the day.

 

[Beck]

I completed going thru all my 1/2" tapes, so herein I will run down the results...

Excellent work! And good of you to share this helpful info!

I've not dealt with tape from the sticky years for a long time because I’ve known what to avoid, but this corroborates my own past experience with Ampex tapes from these years. I have 2 NOS tapes from late 1994 left from a lot that are perfectly fine. The rest of my Ampex 456 is 1995 and above and all perfectly good as the day it was made. I tossed a bunch of 1/2" Ampex many years ago... all 1993 and older. Heart wrenching experience, but I've got plenty of empty reels on hand.