Dear Bob
Many thanks to your friend Kit Rollings in New Zealand.
I am at the moment attempting to scale down my collection of jazz recordings that I have amassed over the passed 35 years, all on 1/4 inch tape.
During the course of this mammoth task of downloading onto a less space demanding format (I have over 250 tapes) I came across a batch with the dreaded sticky tape syndrome!
Not having had much to do with 1/4 inch tape over the past 10 years I was unaware of the problem and was preparing to dump the afflicted tapes.
Then the AMPS Newsletter came to my rescue! As I read how Kit resolved the problem I must admit to a feeling of scepticism - bake in a fan oven for five hours at 50 degrees! It sounded more like a Delia Smith recipe than a technical solution. But what did I have to lose? I was going to dump the tapes anyway. I loaded them into our oven and set it for a long, slow cook (should be quite tasty).
My scepticism was unfounded. After their 'treatment' the tape ran smoothly across the heads, and with no discernible loss of quality to the recordings. Thank you Kit and Bob for saving some of the favourite music in my collection.
Regards
HARRY FAIRBURN
West Yorks