Knowing that I still use open-reel tapes, someone gave me a box of about 200, which had obviously been stored in an extremely humid condition. I went through them one by one and saved about a dozen. I've experienced coating falling off old tapes before, but I've never previously seen mould growing on them.
It goes against my instincts to trash reels and reels of tape, especially nowadays when it costs about $18 a reel, but I wouldn't want them to run past my replay heads.
If anyone wonders why there are no boxes, I put the cardboard boxes in the recycling.
I keep my old reel to reel tapes, some of them over 50 years old, in an old record player wooden box. I've taken no special care of them, like desiccant or whatever, and I have never seen mold on them.
Your tapes must have been in a really bad place.
I have no idea where they were kept; probably in a damp basement.
Like you, I still have all my session tapes from the 60s, and they play as well as they did back then, but I cherish them for the material that's on them and the memories of the sessions. I've backed them up onto CDs and four hard disks. I've even lodged four copies of the sessions on CDs with friends on the other side of the Atlantic, so they should be safe for years to come.
Alan, alot of studios I've worked in get food dehydrators and bake the tapes to get them to play again. This makes them like new most of the time. You should get a hold of a studio and see if they use this process. It sounds like I'm pulling your let, but actually this works. I have seen it done. They get stickey and this re cures them somehow.
Yes, I've heard of that method. But, as I mentioned, none of my tapes has deteriorated; the ones I discarded were given to me; the have no material on them worth saving, and I wouldn't want to put new material on tape that old and risk the possibility of drop out.
