Sadly, my favorite tapes were made during the era of poor mylar
coating and have all turned 'squeaky' and unplayable! I wish I could
have transferred them before they died, but hindsight.

A trick I found for this squeaky problem to do a one time transfer was
to play them as cold as possible, unfortunately just freezing the tapes
doesnt last long enough - always thaught a head heatsink to a
deepfrozen al or cu block might do the trick but I never tried it!! I
just caught mine early enough! Mine were BASF

I don't know if it's the same problem you're referring to, but I do
know that a lot of reel-to-reel tapes made several decades ago suffer
from a problem known as "sticky-shed syndrome".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky-shed_syndrome

There's no permanent cure, but it's often possible to restore such
tapes to playability (at least temporarily) by removing moisture from
the tape/binder. This can be done by "baking" the tape at an elevated
temperature, or by storing the tapes in a temperature-and-humidity-
controlled environment for a period of time.

Some people have tried lubricating the tape just before playing it
(with alcohol, and I think I've heard of people using a light silicone
oil as well).

You might want to select one or two "sticky" tapes, and then doing a
gentle bake (possible heat-and-time schedules are in the Wikipedia
article), or put them in a sealed Tupperware container with several
large (and recently-baked) silica-gel moisture-absorbing packs for a
month or two. See if getting the absorbed moisture out of the binder
restores the tapes to a playable condition... if so, play them and
digitize them!

I had the master and mix tapes for an album my wife recorded in the
late 1970's baked and transcribed, some years ago... the process
worked and we were able to recover the album and transfer it to CD.
Without baking, it would have been a lost cause, I think.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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