Blank/Erased VHS Tapes

[coffee123]

Originally Posted by WilhelmA

Audio tapes do not need "baking" or any other special treatment unless they used a particular hydroscopic polyurethane in their binder formulations. A good portion of Ampex and Agfa production suffered from this instability, and some 3M production also used the same binder. BASF, Maxell, and TDK tapes do not suffer from the same problem and should never be "baked" prior to playing them.

Really? I have transferred tapes from the 50's up to the 80s, and ive had to bake em all. Every time I tried to play one, be it 1/2" up to 2", and 2" especially i have nothing but shedding, and more so binding problems....the tape machine just stops, literally. After baking at low temp 130 deg in a food dehydrator for 6-8 hours, plays fine, almost no shed, and no binding, done and done. Then again I canot remember what brands they were. defiantly remember doing ampex stuff, but i dunno bout other brands. It doesnt hurt the tape to bake it

[WilhelmA]

It may very well hurt the tape if the tape is baked and doesn't need it to drive moisture out. It all depends on the particular chemistry the manufacturer used to make the tape. Cross-linking, base pre-treatment, surface treatment, varying lubricants, double-calendering, and a number of other manufacturing techniques may respond differently when a tape is subjected to heat beyond that for which it was intended. Certainly expansion and contraction put extra stresses on the tape pack when it is heated beyond 90 degrees F.

At BASF we put thermo stickers in all our containers shipped during summer months and paid extra to make sure no tapes were subjected to more than 95degrees F. If they were, the shipper paid for the container, and we threw the tape out.

[reelman1968]

I think the oldest VHs Tapes I Have are a couple from 1978 and 1979. have made copys of them on other vhs tape and dvd-r. Both tapes play back just fine. I use DVD mainly to play them on my laptop.one tape is Elvis in concert. One of the last concerts he did, with the original 1970's commercials. "At GE we never stop inventing the lightbulb"