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Author Topic: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?  (Read 11477 times)

jlapointe

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Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« on: January 21, 2011, 05:35:12 PM »


Has anyone here experienced shedding on Ampex 456 from the 90s?  I had some reels in today that left a fair bit of gunk on the guides of the ATR102 during the first pass. The date code on the tape was 1994.

I used Ampex branded 456 and later Quantegy 456 throughout the 90s without issue, but this is the first time I've revisited any tape from that era.  Shedding w/ 456 from the 70s/80s is well documented, but I don't have much to go on with 90s 456.  Anyone else had trouble with 90s 456?

Best,

- J.

Dominick

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2011, 05:36:46 PM »

Yes.
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Dominick Costanzo

dave-G

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2011, 06:16:30 PM »

Yes.

996 from the 90's too ... and 499.

Snackmaster time.
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DAVE GREENBERG
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mcsnare

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2011, 06:30:12 PM »

I'm transferring about 30 reels of late 80's tapes at this moment. Mostly 456 a few BASF. Most of the 456 is good, a few random reels had to be baked. You never know.

Dave

Greg Youngman

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2011, 08:52:53 PM »

That's pretty bad shedding if it clogs up an ATR.  My ATR is one of the easiest machines on tape I've ever found.

Shed isn't limited to just Ampex stock.  I've had shed from BASF and a recent transfer of numerous reels of Scotch 250 ½" from 1975.
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mcsnare

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2011, 11:26:29 PM »

I love the sound of ATR's but in my experience the guides will gum up quicker than something like an 820. For that reason, and also the gentler tape handling in general, I prefer to use an 820 when playing back older tapes.

Dave

bigaudioblowhard

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2011, 02:16:57 PM »

mcsnare wrote on Fri, 21 January 2011 21:26

I love the sound of ATR's but in my experience the guides will gum up quicker than something like an 820. For that reason, and also the gentler tape handling in general, I prefer to use an 820 when playing back older tapes.

Dave


Copy, and yes. My general rule is, anything 10 years old or older goes straight into the oven, then carefully test, best on an 820, but usually okay on an ATR, after baking.

bab

Dominick

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2011, 09:37:48 PM »

Not everything over 10 years old should go straight into an oven.

Never bake acetate based tapes!

We've never had to bake
3M (Scotch) 100 series tapes
3M (Scotch) 202 / 203
3M (Scotch) 206 / 207 made before 1974
We play dozens of reels of this stuff every week.
Not one reel ever needed baking.

We've never had to bake any European tape (EMI, Agfa etc.) mfd. before 1980
We've never had to bake Maxell, TDK, Sony or any other Japanese mfd. tape of any vintage.

Anything else, we put the tape on a clean machine, play the last 30 seconds of the tail and inspect the heads, guides and rollers for deposits.
If it plays clean, the tape does not gat baked.

The only exception to the above procedure is when we get assembled reels of mixes or masters using suspect tape formulas where we can see that different songs are on different types of tape.
We punt on these and bake them.
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Dominick Costanzo

Greg Reierson

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2011, 08:31:44 PM »

Dominick wrote on Sat, 22 January 2011 20:37

Not everything over 10 years old should go straight into an oven.


The only reason to bake a tape is if its shedding and clogging the heads. Tape that is sticking or squealing is telling you that your deck has too many friction points. Put it on a deck with rollers, yank all of the heads except the repro and you'll be good to go.

If you only have a deck with a lot of fixed guides (stock Otari's for example) you should consider modifying the deck or trading up. You won't be getting the most out of that tape.


GR
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JSam

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2011, 07:02:16 PM »

bigaudioblowhard wrote on Sat, 22 January 2011 11:16

My general rule is, anything 10 years old or older goes straight into the oven, then carefully test, best on an 820, but usually okay on an ATR, after baking.

bab


Be very, very careful with that.  Baking an acetate tape (pre-1973ish) would be a very bad thing.

A better thing to look for is a backcoating.  It's not a 100% correlation either way, but if you're worried about sticky shed, it's an important thing to note.

Back to the original question, tapes from the early/mid 1990s are the worst hydrolysis/sticking offenders I see, and all I work with are old tapes and discs.

The worst oxide shedding ones are off-brand tapes from the 60s and 70s.
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bigaudioblowhard

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #10 on: January 27, 2011, 08:55:49 PM »

bigaudioblowhard wrote on Sat, 22 January 2011 12:16

...

Copy, and yes. My general rule is, anything 10 years old or older goes straight into the oven, then carefully test, best on an 820, but usually okay on an ATR, after baking.

bab



yes of course gentlemen, what I meant to say was, any 456 over 10 years old goes straight into the oven, also pretty much any Agfa 469, 468

thanks for correcting me, bab

Greg Reierson

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2011, 09:17:39 AM »

This has been covered many times. It's a bad idea to bake Agfa tape. Richard Hess had done extensive research into tape issues.

http://richardhess.com/notes/formats/magnetic-media/magnetic -tapes/analog-audio/degrading-tapes


GR
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bigaudioblowhard

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2011, 11:37:42 AM »

Greg Reierson wrote on Fri, 28 January 2011 07:17

This has been covered many times. It's a bad idea to bake Agfa tape. Richard Hess had done extensive research into tape issues.

    http://richardhess.com/notes/formats/magnetic-media/magnetic -tapes/analog-audio/degrading-tapes


GR


thanks for that Greg, and I think I read this a long time ago. Agfa is about the worst for SS.

it appears I'm digging myself into a deeper hole and showing how little I know about this. But I've baked Scotch and Agfa, with good results. I don't think I've baked any acetate tape ever, but as noted, pre '73/4'ish, nothing really sticks anyway.

Here is some proof. At my former place of employ, they put this reel up and rewound a few seconds of the reel (no program, tail out). As you can see, the stuff fell off. This particular reel of Agfa responded well to baking and a clean pass was transfered a day or so later.

index.php/fa/16221/0/

now as I said, I'm not pretending to know much about baking at all, but IME, (and I have a fair amount of experience with baked tapes) it has never harmed one, not even once. I think for damage to occur, one would have to use temperature well in excess of the standard.

bab

Dominick

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2011, 11:47:48 AM »

Greg Reierson wrote on Fri, 28 January 2011 09:17

This has been covered many times. It's a bad idea to bake Agfa tape. Richard Hess had done extensive research into tape issues.

 http://richardhess.com/notes/formats/magnetic-media/magnetic -tapes/analog-audio/degrading-tapes

GR


He cautions against baking Agfa tapes as a matter of course.
Much as I do regarding any tape.
I must agree with Mark that I've never seen a roll of Agfa 469 that didn't need baking.
That stuff shed brand new out of the box!
We've had better luck with Agfa 468. About a 50-50 chance it won't need baking.


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Dominick Costanzo

bigaudioblowhard

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Re: Shedding Ampex 456, mid-90s?
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2011, 12:12:34 PM »

Dominick wrote on Fri, 28 January 2011 09:47

...

He cautions against baking Agfa tapes as a matter of course.
Much as I do regarding any tape.
I must agree with Mark that I've never seen a roll of Agfa 469 that didn't need baking.
That stuff shed brand new out of the box!
We've had better luck with Agfa 468. About a 50-50 chance it won't need baking.





thanks Dominick, I feel the same way about 468, but again, I'd bake the MF first, there's a 50-50 chance it COULD stick, tearing off the emulsion and pretty much ruin your year.

I honestly am of the opinion that its safer to bake a tape, from, say '74 onward, than not. Even a tape that seems to play fine for say a song or two, may only slightly be shedding. A few minutes later, whammo! (guess how I figured this one out)

Having said that, ALL my experience with baked tapes are from the Laboratory Oven at Capitol Studios, not a food dehydrater. Its the kind of thing they use in medical and research facilites, very expensive, very effective, super tight temperature control, safety features, fans, etc. In fact, the rare times I get old tapes at Little Red Book Mastering, I send 'em over to Capitol for baking, and refer all baking to them.                                          
Not exactly cheap though, I think they charge about $40 per reel.

bab
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