Recording - August 2018 - 72

FadeOut
A STICKY SITUATION
Guest editorial by Scott Dorsey

I recently attended the AES Conference of Audio Archiving,
Preservation and Restoration, a small conference of archivists
and conservationists that was held at the Library of Congress
storage facility in Culpepper, VA. I was very surprised to see
the number of people at the event talking about sticky shed
syndrome on tapes.
In the mid-1970s, Ampex introduced a whole new line of
audio mastering tapes, with a flat black backcoating, higher
output oxide, and new urethane-based binder chemistry. The
new urethane chemistry allowed them to get more iron oxide
on the tape than older PVC and latex binders. More oxide
means higher output levels before saturating, and so more
dynamic range. And so, everyone in the industry copied the
basic Ampex designs, with Scotch, Agfa, BASF, and Audio
Devices making urethane-binder backcoated tapes.
Now, if you will recall, owners of loudspeakers made with
urethane foam back in the 1970s and 1980s found that foam
material disintegrating after a decade or two. Likewise, the
urethane pinch rollers that became popular on tape machines
back in that time frame turned to goo. What was happening
was that the long urethane polymer chains were not stable.
They would break apart, leaving broken carbon chains which
were severely deliquescent and would absorb atmospheric
moisture. The combination of the shorter, less rigid polymer
chains and the absorbed moisture caused the previously
rubbery material to turn to a nasty goo.
The same thing happened to the mastering tapes of this
era, and in the early 1990s everybody was starting to panic
about the problem. Tapes were turning to goo on the shelf and
becoming unplayable. People came up with all kinds of weird
methods to play the tapes, such as playing them wet with solvent
or coating them with talc or carnauba wax to solidify the gooey
surface. Some people were desperate; an opera archive in New
York wound up discarding thousands of reels of tape because
they went sticky and they considered them hopeless.
By 1995 or so, it became very clear that the tapes could
be baked at a moderately hard temperature to drive off the
absorbed moisture. The tape is still deliquescent and will go
gooey again, but it's playable for several days or even weeks.
Anything from four hours to three days at 130ºF will drive the
moisture off for long enough.
So, fast forward to 2018, and sticky shed is something
everybody with older tape collections just takes for granted.
When backcoated tapes come in, you bake them before even
attempting transfer, because it won't hurt anything and it's likely
to be needed. (You don't bake acetate tapes, cassettes or the
like, because they don't have sticky-shed problems. They have
72

RECORDING August 2018

different problems, some of which are harder to solve, and old
acetate tapes from the 1950s will melt right down if you mistakenly
try to bake them.)
Because I think of it as a solved problem today, I was
surprised at the amount of discussion at the conference about
it. Andrew Davis from the Library of Congress talked about the
chemistry, and Fedrica Bressan from the University of Ghent
in Belgium showed a new study that failed to find any
degradation from baking. This is interesting because for the
past thirty years, people have been baking tapes, and there
have constantly been arguments about whether there are longterm sonic consequences. The longer it goes with people failing
to find any, the better baking looks.
Richard Hess led a panel summarizing practical information
about baking, and one interesting thing was that Charles
Richardson from Rezerex gave a talk in which he claimed that
it was the carbon black in the backing that somehow causes the
breakdown, and that the oxide layer itself is untouched. This
being the case, he talked about a proprietary method to remove
the backing without affecting the oxide layer. Although he failed
to provide any real supporting evidence describing the chemistry
and wouldn't talk about the removal method, the fact that he
had some older tapes with backcoating removal that were
playable was interesting.
Is carbon black actually implicated? If so, why do urethanes
without it (such as speaker surrounds) go gummy? Maybe iron
oxide performs enough reduction to prevent urethane breakdown? And what of modern stabilizing chemistry? The panel
in general created more questions than it answered, and it
was closed out with Dietrich Schueller from the Vienna Phonogramarkiv talking about some interviews he'd done with BASF
and Agfa engineers about their production processes.
All of these people, brought from different places around the
world, were stopping to talk about a problem that I think most
engineers think is something that's been solved. The fact that
this happens points out that we really don't know everything
about the problem, even though we have a worthwhile fix for
the time being.
On top of this, it was clear that the word hadn't reached
everyone yet, even after 30 years of work. Someone from
an archive in Germany had brought a reel of tape "with a
mysterious problem" to the event, and asked around about
it. It was just ordinary everyday sticky shed, but he'd never
heard of it before. It's clear that we still need to do a lot more
to get the word out that the problem exists, and that it has a
cure.... as well as the fact that although there is a cure, it's
not totally understood.



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2018

REVIEWS
Ears On: Focal Clear Professional.
Reviewed & Revisited: Daking Mic Pre II.
GIK Acoustics Gotham Quadratic Diffuser.
ART RM5 Active Studio Monitor.
IK Multimedia iRig Keys I/O.
Yamaha EAD10.
Soundware Showcase: Spitfire Audio LABS.
Vanatoo Transparent Zero Monitors.
Ears On: beyerdynamic DT 770 STUDIO.
Roland Rubix24.
Kludge Audio 506 Equalizer and 510 Transwarmer.
Once Over—Reviews In Brief.
FEATURES
10 Tips For A Successful Live Recording.
Studio 101. Part 8: Mixing, Part 1—Signal Flow.
“Girl You Know It’s...” A Lot More Than You Realize!
Live Orchestra Recording.
REGULARS
Fade In.
Talkback.
Fast Forward
Readers' Tracks
Fade Out.
Advertiser Index.
Recording - August 2018 - 1
Recording - August 2018 - Cover1
Recording - August 2018 - Cover2
Recording - August 2018 - 1
Recording - August 2018 - 2
Recording - August 2018 - 3
Recording - August 2018 - Fade In.
Recording - August 2018 - 5
Recording - August 2018 - REGULARS
Recording - August 2018 - 7
Recording - August 2018 - Talkback.
Recording - August 2018 - 9
Recording - August 2018 - Fast Forward
Recording - August 2018 - 11
Recording - August 2018 - 12
Recording - August 2018 - 13
Recording - August 2018 - 14
Recording - August 2018 - 15
Recording - August 2018 - 16
Recording - August 2018 - 17
Recording - August 2018 - 18
Recording - August 2018 - 19
Recording - August 2018 - Ears On: Focal Clear Professional.
Recording - August 2018 - 21
Recording - August 2018 - 22
Recording - August 2018 - 23
Recording - August 2018 - Reviewed & Revisited: Daking Mic Pre II.
Recording - August 2018 - 25
Recording - August 2018 - GIK Acoustics Gotham Quadratic Diffuser.
Recording - August 2018 - 27
Recording - August 2018 - 28
Recording - August 2018 - 29
Recording - August 2018 - ART RM5 Active Studio Monitor.
Recording - August 2018 - 31
Recording - August 2018 - IK Multimedia iRig Keys I/O.
Recording - August 2018 - 33
Recording - August 2018 - Yamaha EAD10.
Recording - August 2018 - 35
Recording - August 2018 - Soundware Showcase: Spitfire Audio LABS.
Recording - August 2018 - 37
Recording - August 2018 - Studio 101. Part 8: Mixing, Part 1—Signal Flow.
Recording - August 2018 - 39
Recording - August 2018 - 40
Recording - August 2018 - 41
Recording - August 2018 - Vanatoo Transparent Zero Monitors.
Recording - August 2018 - 43
Recording - August 2018 - 44
Recording - August 2018 - 45
Recording - August 2018 - Ears On: beyerdynamic DT 770 STUDIO.
Recording - August 2018 - 47
Recording - August 2018 - Roland Rubix24.
Recording - August 2018 - 49
Recording - August 2018 - Kludge Audio 506 Equalizer and 510 Transwarmer.
Recording - August 2018 - 51
Recording - August 2018 - 52
Recording - August 2018 - 53
Recording - August 2018 - 54
Recording - August 2018 - 55
Recording - August 2018 - 56
Recording - August 2018 - 57
Recording - August 2018 - “Girl You Know It’s...” A Lot More Than You Realize!
Recording - August 2018 - 59
Recording - August 2018 - Once Over—Reviews In Brief.
Recording - August 2018 - 61
Recording - August 2018 - Live Orchestra Recording.
Recording - August 2018 - 63
Recording - August 2018 - 64
Recording - August 2018 - 65
Recording - August 2018 - Readers' Tracks
Recording - August 2018 - Advertiser Index.
Recording - August 2018 - 68
Recording - August 2018 - 69
Recording - August 2018 - 70
Recording - August 2018 - 71
Recording - August 2018 - Fade Out.
Recording - August 2018 - Cover3
Recording - August 2018 - Cover4
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