In the late 70s to mid 80s, a radio nonprofit I worked for bought boxes and boxes of Shamrock black 7" reels of castoff Ampex 457 - some of it not slit properly, some of it with gooey backcoating or falling off even when new. We'd splice together two 7" reels for an hourlong program, and sometimes they would actually sound different... we made masters on this S**T too. Imagine the baking when some of that is acccessed now! Fortunately most of the 20 years they did analog, it was on Scotch 176 - cheap and ordinary but still plays fine today (I know, I transfer tapes for them even now sometimes!)...
My point is Shamrock is all discraded tape as far as I am concerned. Careful!
Lou Judson • Intuitive Audio 415-883-2689
In a message dated 1/4/2006 11:33:25 AM Eastern Standard Time, micasey@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: Bob,
I'm curious about the two sss tapes that baking did not restore--any thoughts on what might have been different with those two tapes compared to the countless others that were succesfully baked?
Mike ***************
Not that it relates to Bob's case, but similar tapes that I've found were green-box "Shamrock" reels in which the oxide did not seem sticky, but partly smoothly transferred to the backing of the previous layer, leaving effectively double coated tape.
Considering the source, this may have represented a catastrophic manufacturing defect that was passed on to the "white box" market.
Mike Csontos