Right. As a recordist for many years I never used hold down tape to secure the ends and only very early on, leader tape, thus avoiding oozing gunk down the road. I always store my tapes tail out to avoid print through and regularly rewind the tapes every 5 years or so. I also leave about 50 feet of blank tape before the test tones at the head of each reel just because it seemed the prudent thing to do. Can't say the same for all my home tapes, especially when recording on the fly, but for the most part I still have a playable and archivable collection of from 1/4" to 2" tape spanning from 1955 to 1990. Internal splices to a master tape were always avoided unless absolutely necessary. That's what first generation copies were for. Any breaks or undone splices found during rewinding were left *as is* and noted on the box so repairs could be made at the time if the tape was ever played or rerecorded later. Of course it took me years to figure all this out! Mal Rockwell
Hello Christie Peterson,
The best general rule I know of is NOT to use ANY sort of adhesive material on reel-to-reel tape, neither splicing tape (unless absolutely necessary for repair) nor hold-down tape. Eventually the adhesive will bleed through the tape or ooze out at the edges and cause trouble. And those plastic hold-down tabs, which are not adhesive, are at least as bad as adhesive, since they damage many layers of tape. I've never noticed any problem, in about 40 years of experience, from using nothing.
Sincerely, Richard Warren
At 09:05 AM 1/23/2007, you wrote:
Hello, ARSC-listers:
I'm looking into what kind of adhesive tape to use to affix the end of 1/4" open-reel audio tape to the reel for long-term storage. As an archivist, I am perhaps obsessively afraid of adhesive tape (it still makes me cringe a little inside every time I have to use splicing tape), since I have seen first-hand what it does after 20, 40, 60, etc. years.
Still, I am at least equally afraid of damage to improperly stored audio tapes, so I'm looking for advice.
From those of you who have been in the "business" for multiple decades, and/or who have worked extensively with older tapes, what type of adhesive tape do you advise (and not advise) using? Is there anything out there that doesn't seep excessively, or do other *terribly* ugly things as it ages? What do you use and why?
As a corollary, the original tapes I'm working with have been stored with their ends un-secured for 30-40 years, and most don't seem to have suffered any ill effects from this. Any opinions/horror stories on the importance of taping the end down?
Thanks in advance,
Christie Peterson Project Archivist, Muskie Archives & Special Collections Bates College 70 Campus Avenue Lewiston, ME 04240-6018 (t) 207-753-6918 (f) 207-755-5911