I did a search and couldn't find anything, although i recall discussing this previously.

I've heard 2 things about baking tape. 1) do it at 200 degrees and it's only good for getting it back temporarily so you can do a transfer. 2)do it betwee 130 and 200 degrees and it's good for up to a year, then it may need baking again.

Can baked tape be reliable enough to use on a new session (assuming that all other characteristics of the tape are fine/clean)?

I'm asking because a friend of mine jsut sold his tape machine and gave me a bunch of 20 yr old 3M tape, unused, but it's sticky and shedding.

Jeremy

Do yourself a huge favor, find a dumpster and dump all that tape in it, walk away and never worry about it again.

Why would you choose to record on something that you know is defective?

If the tape needs baking to work, it's broken. If there was material to rescue from that tape, baking would be a temporary fix to transfer it to something stable, but from what I read that's not what you're talking about.

Save the hubs and flanges, and buy some pancakes of new tape. It's not that expensive.

This is what I suspected, and thanks.

I wouldn't have questioned it except that some of the guys on the Apmex mailing list, which is mostly people who really know what they're talking about, mentioned baking tape for a up to a week at low temperatures.

thanks again.


Jeremy

I hope I didn't come across as too harsh, I just want to save you a headache later on.

What is the concept of baking tape? I've always heard or read about studios doing this, but never in detail. how long do you bake? Temp? What kind of oven?

Thanks

Basically, when tape collects small amounts of moisture, it becomes sticky, you bake it in order to pull this moisture out.

between 130 and 140 degrees. I've done it at 170 and it's been fine. time depends on the size of the reel. I think I read somewhere that it should be 45 mins for every 1/4 inch of tape. so 2" is about 6 hours which is what I do and it works. I don't think there is such thing as too long, at least not at that temperature. As I mentioned previously, some of the audiophyles on the ampex mailing list do it for somehting like 1 -2 weeks.

Jeremy, thanks!

You just provided me with a new song title!

It will be:

Jeremy wrote:Can baked tape

I like it.

Tape baking also can temporarily strenghten the glue that holds the oxide to the plastic backing.

My work did a giant A -> D transfer for the Bill Graham Archive. We had to bake a metric shitload of tapes. If 8 hours at 135 didn't work, we'd bump it up to 145. We have some tapes that were baked over 24 hours at 145 in order to get it to play without damaging itself.

In all cases I've never seen a baked tape be able to play fine for longer than a week. You don't want to use old tape. If you do bake it so that it's nice you have only 1-7 days before you start losing your material.

Good Luck.

Ben

we bake tape at 50 deg centegrade for 3 days. beware of coloured leader. if you dont change it you will get it on your tape, the its buggered. about a week is really the effective time, so either make an analogue copy of it or digitise.