Sticky Shed Help Thread

[CaliGal]

I had a discussion with Ciletti a couple years ago and afterwards he said he was considering revising the part about playing the tape first before baking... but the site appears to have been stagnant for a long time. Most of the info there is good, but hasn't been updated in a while.

I strongly disagree with any recommendation to spool the tape so it's even. That's the one sure way to irreversibly damage sticky-shed tape… not to mention what it does to the machine. When you see and hear tape peeling off and falling apart on your heads you'll know what I mean. It's a hideous sound.

During the baking process the tape loosens and falls neatly to the bottom reel anyway. Only after that does the tape need to be wound at Play or Spooling speed.

Thanks much for this! It makes perfect sense to use as much caution as possible - not spool, bake first, and try to get the transfers done in just one single pass through the machine - even if it has to play in reverse (can always flip it back in digital). Less play = less chance of deterioration.

To make it even more interesting of course, now I have to find 24 track 2" and 16 track 1" machines in studios willing to touch my old (baked) Ampex 456 tapes. (1/4" I can handle.) Even in L.A. where there used to be tons of those rooms working for cheap, that might be a tough search - as most all of them seemed to have been replaced long ago with digital. Where did all that hardware go?

 

[Beck]

Thanks much for this! It makes perfect sense to use as much caution as possible - not spool, bake first, and try to get the transfers done in just one single pass through the machine - even if it has to play in reverse (can always flip it back in digital). Less play = less chance of deterioration.

To make it even more interesting of course, now I have to find 24 track 2" and 16 track 1" machines in studios willing to touch my old (baked) Ampex 456 tapes. (1/4" I can handle.) Even in L.A. where there used to be tons of those rooms working for cheap, that might be a tough search - as most all of them seemed to have been replaced long ago with digital. Where did all that hardware go?

I've posted a couple lists of studios with analog gear here in the past, many of them in L.A. Now where did I put those links?

 

[MusicalSound]

sticky shed leaves me with flakes of magnetized particles all over the machine! tough to deal with....sad.

 

[j.harv]

If its leaving a mess on your machine,then get rid of that tape!!!!!

 

[sweetbeats]

sticky shed leaves me with flakes of magnetized particles all over the machine! tough to deal with....sad.

We call that flakey shed. And yes its a bummer huh? Sticky shed as the name implies leaves a sticky gooey mess on everything in the tape path and is tough to remove and can damage motors and such in some cases where the tape gets bound up.

NOT WORTH IT!

What tape are you using?

You can get flakey shed too if the wear pattern on the tape path components doesn't match the tape you are using. For instance AGFA/EMTEC/BASF/RMGI tape is slit slightly wider than Ampex/Quantegy equivalents. The tape may be fine but the guides, heads and lifters wreak havoc on the very edges of the tape.

 

[Beck]

sticky shed leaves me with flakes of magnetized particles all over the machine! tough to deal with....sad.

I too am interested in what kind of tape you're using. Tape with Sticky Shed Syndrome (SSS) will leave flakes or shreds behind depending on how advanced the SSS and kind of tape. The worst I've seen is 3M/Scotch 226, which was always a bit wider width than Ampex 456. BASF SM469 is also bad for flaking and shedding. And as sweetbeats indicated, a heavily worn tape path, especially with flat spots where it should be round and smooth is hard on any tape.

 

[sweetbeats]

Tim, is flaky shed usually a precursor to sticky shed or do some tapes just get flaky? Probably covered somewhere in this thread already...

 

[Poulsbo Slim]

Hi all,
I have something going on with a NEW tape, but it's not "sticky". It's powdery. I'm using a reel of RMGI LPR35. Ironically, it's the only new reel of tape I've owned. I'm just starting on a tascam 388 and I've been using various old 1 mil tape. A lot of it has been stored in awful conditions and haven't given me any problems. But with the RMG, I can only record for about two minutes and thirty seconds before the heads build up a powdery heap of fine magnetized tape stuff and then the volume/quality goes south. I guess that's "flaky shed"? It's not flaky though, it's powdery. It pertains to what tracks I'm recording on, i.e. if I'm recording on tracks two and three, that's where the build-up is gonna happen on the head. It comes off super easy: one wipe of a q-tip. But it's basically useless tape unless it's a two minute song and you don't mind cleaning after every take. For the two minutes it lets me record, I can hear a step up in fidelity, so I'd like to make the jump in using all new tape. So my questions are: 1. Does this sound like the symptoms of a machine (which, mine has VERY little sign of much use in its years) that has worn a tape path that is too small for RMG tape? 2. If so, can I overcome that problem somehow? 3. If there's no overcoming it, how hard is it to find older tape that sounds as good? Thanks so much for any help.

 

[RRuskin]

Hi all,
I have something going on with a NEW tape, but it's not "sticky". It's powdery. I'm using a reel of RMGI LPR35. Ironically, it's the only new reel of tape I've owned. I'm just starting on a tascam 388 and I've been using various old 1 mil tape. A lot of it has been stored in awful conditions and haven't given me any problems. But with the RMG, I can only record for about two minutes and thirty seconds before the heads build up a powdery heap of fine magnetized tape stuff and then the volume/quality goes south. I guess that's "flaky shed"? It's not flaky though, it's powdery. It pertains to what tracks I'm recording on, i.e. if I'm recording on tracks two and three, that's where the build-up is gonna happen on the head. It comes off super easy: one wipe of a q-tip. But it's basically useless tape unless it's a two minute song and you don't mind cleaning after every take. For the two minutes it lets me record, I can hear a step up in fidelity, so I'd like to make the jump in using all new tape. So my questions are: 1. Does this sound like the symptoms of a machine (which, mine has VERY little sign of much use in its years) that has worn a tape path that is too small for RMG tape? 2. If so, can I overcome that problem somehow? 3. If there's no overcoming it, how hard is it to find older tape that sounds as good? Thanks so much for any help.

It seems that you have a defective reel. Go back to your vendor and ask to exchange it for a reel from a different batch.

 

[Beck]

Tim, is flaky shed usually a precursor to sticky shed or do some tapes just get flaky? Probably covered somewhere in this thread already...

Some really old tapes flake as in the oxide layer coming of the base tape sort of like sun burned skin peels off. (Yeah I know? yuk!) This kind of flaking isn't Sticky Shed. Flaking tapes are more common among older non-backcoated tapes from the 50's and 60's that used an acetate base, but I?ve seen it in some poly/mylar base tapes as well. Also some modern tapes used in video or DAT and also some poor quality standard cassette tape.

Sticky shed tape tends to get shredded along the edges as it passes over non-moving parts in the tape path, leaving a trail of gooey flecks? small pieces of oxide layer.

P.S. Sorry it took me 6 months to answer this question. I missed it somehow.

 

[Lance Lawson]

The only time sticky tape should be run is to retrieve wanted recordings for storage onto digital or other good tape. I prefer running old tape recordings onto digital most of the time. But to have the idea that sticky shed tapes that are baked or otherwise made serviceable can again be used for rerecording is a hugely false assumption. Having had almost my entire RTR library 40+ reels of sticky Ampex go bad was enough to convince me that the best thing is to save the boxes and reels and dump the tape. I avoid all Ampex except for 632 which is a stable non backcoated music grade tape. I see stuff on Ebay all the time that I know is sticky shed yet people are willing to sell it and people are willing to buy it. Talk about a false economy. New is where its at!

 

[Beck]

The only time sticky tape should be run is to retrieve wanted recordings for storage onto digital or other good tape. I prefer running old tape recordings onto digital most of the time. But to have the idea that sticky shed tapes that are baked or otherwise made serviceable can again be used for rerecording is a hugely false assumption.

Correct! Bad tape should only be baked as a temporary fix for the purpose of transferring the contents to good tape or a digital medium. Putting new material on tape with sticky shed syndrome is asking for trouble. I’ve probably said this in 100 posts at least over the years. (Maybe 200)

Having had almost my entire RTR library 40+ reels of sticky Ampex go bad was enough to convince me that the best thing is to save the boxes and reels and dump the tape. I avoid all Ampex except for 632 which is a stable non backcoated music grade tape. I see stuff on Ebay all the time that I know is sticky shed yet people are willing to sell it and people are willing to buy it. Talk about a false economy. New is where its at!

Yes, new tape only including new old stock of many brands. Quantegy 600 series is good non-backcoated tape. So is Maxell 35-xx. However, Quantegy still used the Ampex logo until 1998. Ampex branded 456 from 1995 and on has the new stable binder. Its as good as more recent manufacture. Ampex fixed the binder problem a couple years before the magnetic division was acquired by Quantegy. Nearly all of what I see on eBay these days is from the sticky shed years. So if you see unopened Ampex from the good years and Quantegy 456/457, 406/407, 3M/scotch 206/207, etc… buy it!!! The days when you’ll be able to get it appear to be drawing to a close. Years ago I regularly posted a list of bad tape being sold on ebay. Now a list of good tape would be shorter and take less time.

 

[Blue Jinn]

I have an Ampex calibration tape, that AFAIK has never been used, came with a Fostex A8 I picked up a while ago, and another mbr here has a sticky era cal tape he keeps in a sealed bag with a desiccant package. I did read something on Wiki (truth by consensus....) that baking can lead to O/L drop, which would seem problematic with a cal tape. So, bake the cal tape? toss teh cal tape? or maybe seal the cal tape with the desicccant package and leave it alone for a while?????

 

[Beck]

First off… never rely on wiki for anything. It’s convenient since its one of the first things to come up and maybe good for quick results to follow up on, but standing on its on it’s mostly a work of fiction. There is no basis for the claim that baking causes a loss of output. Untreated sticky shed is what can cause output loss by several dB because sticky shed tape doesn’t make good head to tape contact. Low output and muddy high frequencies are signs of sticky shed, but are (temporarily) corrected through baking. The only problem associated with baking tape is a slight increase in print through. It should have no measurable impact on cal tape output. And a tape can be baked as many times as you need… there’s no limit.

I have an MRL 31J229 that was made in the sticky shed years and it is perfectly fine for a time after baking. I also have a TEAC YTT-1144-2 form the good years that doesn’t need baking. They’re both the same level when played back. In fact I was surprised the first time I played them back after baking the MRL to see they were in perfect agreement. I believe the TEAC tape was made by MRL, but possibly STL.

Putting a desiccant pack in the box once the tape has cooled down can't hurt, but there's no data on how much longer that prevents the tape from from returning to a sticky state.

 

[johnkavan]

I have encountered stick-shed on at least one cassette. One was so bad that it could not be played (or even wound) by anything that I own, and it even broke the capstan belt in my strongest machine when I tried to play it!

However, I decided to bake it like I would a sticky R2R tape, and then it played perfectly for a good clean transfer.

I'm guessing that it might have used Ampex tape of some sort.

 

[Beck]

Yep, I've seen a handful of pre-recorded commercial cassettes in that condition, but not many. I think there may have been a short run with a bad binder. The one problem may be that the cassettes in question don't have screws so you can't remove the tape for baking. I know the tape is perfectly fine sitting in 130 - 140 degree F temps, but not sure if it may cause some warping of the shell. I haven't run into any cassettes like that for so long I'm thankful I've never had to deal with trying to recover a sticky cassette.

Well ok, technically you can remove the tape but you'll destroy the shell and have to use a different one with screws. I've separated shells with an exacto knife to repair tape that broke... and never want to do it again!

 

[frosty55]

I have several old reels of Ampex 456, two reels of Quantegy 456. The numbers on the small white labels on each box seems to show that theyre all from 1996 onwards.
Would they be safe on my newly serviced Teac 80-8?
What damage might they do?

 

[Beck]

I have several old reels of Ampex 456, two reels of Quantegy 456. The numbers on the small white labels on each box seems to show that theyre all from 1996 onwards.
Would they be safe on my newly serviced Teac 80-8?
What damage might they do?

1995 and later Ampex/Quantegy 456 never had sticky-shed. If you have new Ampex tape from 1995 it's as good (and many would say better) as 456 made in 2005. You don't have any problem tape as long as you know the original tape is on the original reels and in the original boxes with those dates. If the tapes were used when you bought them and you don’t know the history of a particular tape, then there is no way of knowing what it is. As long as you bought them new those dates tell you they are good.

 

[Lt. Bob]

1995 and later Ampex/Quantegy 456 never had sticky-shed. If you have new Ampex tape from 1995 it's as good (and many would say better) as 456 made in 2005. You don't have any problem tape as long as you know the original tape is on the original reels and in the original boxes with those dates. If the tapes were used when you bought them and you don’t know the history of a particular tape, then there is no way of knowing what it is. As long as you bought them new those dates tell you they are good.

all of my tapes are from the 70's and 80's so I'm screwed.
except I want to archive them mainly so I just bought a food dehydrator and I'm gonna read up on baking.

 

[frosty55]

Thanks chaps.