This is the first of many guest articles here. Thanks to Marie for agreeing to share her wonderful work in playing tapes that did not respond to baking. SSS=Sticky Shed Syndrome, LoL = Loss of Lubricant –Richard

There has been a lot of interest in this issue recently and I’ve answered several people privately. Hopefully this location will make the work more accessible to all who are interested.

The general appearance of the Mark II. As you can see, I had the luxury of being surrounded by these great machines and so we sacrificed one with all the adaptations done by a great technician by the name of Noel McGinnity - we both agreed we still wanted it to look like an almost regular Studer! All the tubing has been adapted to withstand isopropyl alcohol and the IV drip bag does not leak.

I began working at Sound Archives/Nga Taonga Korero, which is a wholly owned subsidary of Radio New Zealand in 1994. My task was to preserve and digitize the entire NZ Composer’s collection to begin with. I was taught my skills “on the job” but was lucky enough to have the wisdom & know it all of several older broadcasting technicians at my fingertips.

(more…)

This is a general article to provide some information on the subject. More should follow.

There are multiple modes of degradation and it depends on the type of tape.

Acetate Tape

• Degrades through drying out (hydration has helped in some cases)
• Breakdown of the base through “vinegar syndrome” and possibly leading to total decompostion (although that has not been seen for tapes on any large scale)
• Damage from heat
• Damage from mold/fungus
• Loss of Lubricant is probably rare in acetate tapes. Few examples of it have been found.
• Freezing acetate tape (especially) is considered bad as many of the formulations included fatty-acid lubricants. Remember, this was from the 1940s and 1950s and one of the best lubricants of the era was sperm oil.

Polyester tape

• Binder hydrolysis (or sticky shed syndrome [SSS]) is the largest challenge faced with tapes from the 1970s-1990s. This can be partially reversed through incubation or heat treatment. While this link may not be complete, it is a great introduction.
• Loss of Lubricant (LoL) can be severe and can possibly be combined with binder hydroysis.
• Freezing is also not recommended for polyester tapes due to the potential of that tape also containing fatty-acid lubricants.

Obviously all tapes can suffer from mechanical damage and poor winds.

I expect to be discussing aspects of this in greater depth, but it is a complex subject and contradictory reports have been generated.