poita said:
Thanks Puggo, the VO-9850 isn’t high band is it?
If the tapes need baking, are you able to offer that service?
Hi Poita - The VO-9850 is low band, and can play either normal or SP tapes. Are your tapes high band? I think the two formats are totally incompatible with each other. Low band is much more common, but if your tapes are high-band, that would be really cool because the quality could be higher.
As for baking, I’ve baked hundreds of open-reel EIAJ tapes. I use an American Harvest food dehydrator - it’s quite gentle and has a pretty accurate thermostat. It is the same model used by BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition). I haven’t tried baking a U-Matic tape before. I did some reading online… it seems most houses simply bake the whole cassette intact, and a few remove the tape from the housing. There is a tradeoff there… U-Matic housings are a pain in the rear to re-assemble, much more difficult than, say, audio cassettes. Apparently, if you leave the tape in the housing, there is some small risk of “outgassing”, which is if some material in the housing releases gasses during the baking that do something bad (not clear what, exactly - something to the tape, I think?).
Most U-Matic tapes don’t require baking - it depends on the tape stock. Almost all Ampex tapes exhibit sticky-shed (mine were getting it just a few years after I bought them), some 3M, and a few Sonys (but most Sony’s are ok – except Sony EIAJ open-reel tapes; almost all of those require baking in my experience. Not sure why Sony UMatics are ok but Sony EIAJs aren’t). Bottom line, if it doesn’t require baking, I wouldn’t bake it. If you learn that it does, and you want me to bake it in the housing, I can do that. (I am not confident removing it from the housing and reassembling it myself). So do some research, think about your options, and let me know.
Make sure you are well-versed in cleaning the tape path of your U-Matic deck. Because if you observe that your tape requires baking because it squeals and stops playing, the tape path will most definitely need a thorough cleaning !! 😃 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cleaned the tape path of my EIAJ deck.