These tapes look good to the eye and seem like a good value, but unfortunately many of them are suffering from "sticky shed" syndrome. We'd never bought used open reel tapes until this collection of 16 reels from eBay. I assumed something newer than my existing stock of Scotch/Realistic tapes from the 1960s and 1970s would be more reliable. I was wrong. It's odd that my consumer-level tapes, some of which are 60 years old, seem to be longer lasting than this lot of 16 "professional" reel to reel tapes from the 1980s. Although most of the tapes were deteriorated and not usable, the clear plastic reels are in good shape (except for the one I baked too long in the oven!) and price per tape was under $3. What makes these tapes stand out from the usual offerings online?
(1) Writing indicates professional use ("Tails" "dbx" "Duplicating master").
(2) Dates were new- (1986 to 1990) - consumers would have converted to cassette by that time.
As it turns out, these were probably recorded by someone to make tapes for a company (Huthwaite) that appears to have been in the business of sales training classes. Some of the quotes on there are hilarious, like being unable to justify the HUGE expense of "installing an e-mail system" because the employees are used to voice mail. We have not listened to all of them yet, but I have included some samples throughout this video. You can tell many of them are severely degraded, but a few sound fine, especially the (maybe Maxell) tape that shows no signs of problems.
0:00 Intro
0:30 Audio Sample 1
0:46 My Tape Collection
2:12 Audio Sample 2
2:47 Decoding the labels
4:47 Problems with the tapes
5:50 Baking Tape in the Oven!
6:30 Conclusion
6:50 More Audio Samples
Thanks for watching this quick video about our experience buying reel to reel tapes! If you'd like to see more vintage technology videos, check out this playlist:
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