
“Baking” damaged reel-to-reel tapes renders them playable again - pwg
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/the-chemistry-of-why-baking-degraded-reel-to-reel-tapes-can-reverse-damage/
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webkike
If you want to understand the true beauty of these machines, I recommend
listening to this wonderful mix by the great Kerri Chandler played on four
reel-to-reel machines
[https://youtu.be/YC7Mw8RjlXM](https://youtu.be/YC7Mw8RjlXM)

~~~
tinco
I think house is might be the one genre I genuinely don't get at all. Playing
this mix just cemented this feeling to me. I can hear it's smooth and mellow,
but it's also just the most boring thing ever. If I go out to dance and a DJ
is playing this I go find a different place. As I'm typing this comment the
music only just got interesting, and I'm at 8:15, like why.. And I just know
that he's just going to ruin it by making the interesting part boring by
stretching it for the next 4 minutes. I've got a few friends in my old crew
that still do house dance, and I can get with it for a while, but eventually
the boringness just gets to me and I need something to either pop or break.

~~~
webkike
Don’t really know what to say. Your comment reads like someone telling me that
they don’t like a pan seared salmon filet. I don’t think anyone will convince
you that this music is exciting but 120/130 bpm is a fine speed to dance to
and there’s a reason people enjoy music like this

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tinco
Well I don't set my metronome to 120 and jam to it tho.. but kidding aside,
that's exactly why I made the comment. I feel so weird for it, like I
genuinely can tell that it's good fish, and that it's prepared exquisitely, I
just can't enjoy it for some reason. For me it's just one snare hit away from
something truly danceable like maybe dancehall or electropop.

~~~
mitjak
the repetitiveness is the appeal, is all i can say. i hear similar arguments
about ambient music. "it's the same chord for 40 minutes", "it's just white
noise".

~~~
saagarjha
I find that putting on repetitive music in the background while working is
helpful.

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sramsay
I think when people think of "reel-to-reel" tape, they're probably imagining
the sort of upright desktop models that were extremely popular among hobbyists
in the 50s and 60s.

But studio-grade tape machines were absolute engineering marvels. They could
weigh as much as a thousand pounds, and had to be maintained and calibrated by
highly-skilled technicians.

There were a thousand factors with tape (tape formula, humidity, azimuth,
asperity, the fact that it's a Tuesday), but having an even speed was the main
thing. The big names in analog tape -- Ampex, Studer, MCI -- were really all
about creating extremely precise motors. IPS (inches per second) was the
critical number, and the engineers who worked on that problem are legends.
Honestly, these incredible gadgets belong next to Rolleiflex cameras and
Lamborghini clutches in the history of mechanical engineering.

~~~
palijer
I used to calibrate Studors when I got my first reel (ha) internship out of
college. Fascinating machines, I loved being in a small cohort of self-taught
individuals who could work on decades old technology.

Sometimes we would lack documentation on a particular model, or part we needed
to repair, but I remember my mentor's words that follow me through industries
and jobs to this day;

"if a human designed and built it, a human can understand and repair it".

~~~
sramsay
Wow. That's awesome. I've always heard that people like you really became
"tape whisperers," with a lot of knowledge passed down and tons of self-
teaching. You're part of a very elite group, honestly.

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jdoliner
There are a surprisingly large number of electronic and media devices that can
be fixed through baking (1 would be surprising). I've heard this can work with
video cards and motherboards as well I wonder if HN knows of any other such
devices.

~~~
stronglikedan
Not baking, but I've recovered data from spinning hard drives after freezing
them, on a couple of occasions. The last one required keeping it in a cooler
full of ice, because the data transfer was so slow that it would stop once
thawed.

~~~
artifact_44
freezing helps solidify and congeal the grease that degrades and becomes
stickier over time and causes the drive mechanisms to stop spinning or blocks
the seeking heads. As the drive heats up again, that degraded grease becomes a
sticky goop again and gums up the drive.

Heating devices to fix them is a form of "reflowing" where you're getting the
solder on the board close to its melting point, helping the solder 'reflow'
into the cracks that have formed between its component contacts, via thermal
or mechanical stress over time.

~~~
Scoundreller
But why would grease work better when it gets more solid?

Usually the lighter fractions evaporate away, leaving solid grease that has
more resistance.

~~~
krallja
If you get grease into your garbage disposal grinder, I’ve heard you should
use cold water to get it to congeal so the grinder can break it up and it will
continue flowing once it’s in the drain. If you use warm water, it might flow,
but only long enough to then solidify on your drainpipes.

Maybe something similar is happening on the hard drive: sticky is too viscous
to flow at full speed, but solid just breaks apart and dances around on the
platters while the heads can make contact with the magnetic media.

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kitotik
Hope you get it right on the first try!

You don’t really get a second chance to bake it. The particles just start
flying off the tape and leave a nice coating on the heads.

~~~
jlarcombe
You can bake it again, as I understand it. It's obvious fairly quickly if it's
still shedding...

~~~
kitotik
Hmm, probably either the reels I’ve tried this with, or using bad technique,
but there is no way the ones I’ve tried could handle a second bake. They start
looking semi-transparent in spots like scotch tape!

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olivermarks
Dave Lee/Joey Negro has been rescuing the master tapes of classic songs for
years, and after the legal rights hunt is done baking the tapes before
digitization, Genius respectful remixer IMO. Also love Chandler but much as I
like his incredible tape deck mixing didn't enjoy his set that much

[https://news.traxsource.com/articles/819/remixed-with-
love-b...](https://news.traxsource.com/articles/819/remixed-with-love-by-joey-
negro)

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bdcravens
My first technology job was for a computer store that did the same thing to
get an old hard drive to spin up so they could copy the files off to a new
drive.

~~~
jacquesm
I highly doubt that's the same mechanism though, this has to do with the
carrier of the tape getting stuck, something harddrives do not have a problem
with. Typically with old harddrives that haven't run for years it is enough to
put a drop of oil on the spindle bearing and then to spin it up manually
before engaging the motor (which may otherwise burn out trying to unstick the
bearing).

~~~
defterGoose
It probably works because heating whatever lubricant remains in the spindle
bearing lowers its viscosity enough to allow the motor to spin it up, which
will in turn keep the lube warm enough to allow it to form a film. Not the
same mechanism, surely, but a similar one.

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djmips
They mentioned future experiments with other magnetic media like VHS tapes and
compact cassette but what about old floppy discs? I have a friend with a bunch
of old 5.25 floppy discs that he hasn't thrown away but they also can't be
read. Would this approach have a chance to rejuvenate an old bad floppy?

~~~
djmips
I know of another technique that requires special hardware for Apple II, it's
a floppy read mechanism that can read / re-read the floppy at the 'flux' level
and build up a statistical profile which often is correct about the hard to
read areas. ref ([https://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/episode-6-applesauce-
with-j...](https://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/episode-6-applesauce-with-john-
keoni-morris))

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djmips
Someone just pointed out to me that some source code was recovered from an old
tape using a baking method. Interesting!

[https://strandgames.com/blog/magnetic-scrolls-games-
source-c...](https://strandgames.com/blog/magnetic-scrolls-games-source-code-
recovered)

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jdmoreira
I've been looking at Revox B77s prices for a while now. Should probably just
buy one soon!

~~~
mitjak
such a stunner of a machine. i've cheapened out and got an AKAI deck in the
meantime ))

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asdff
People used to bake their Xbox 360s to get them to work again. Worked pretty
well actually.

~~~
onion2k
The towel trick[1] brought a red-ringed 360 of mine back to life for a
weekend, but then it died again. :(

[1] [https://www.wikihow.com/Do-the-Xbox-360-Towel-
Trick](https://www.wikihow.com/Do-the-Xbox-360-Towel-Trick)

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atrn
Related Ampex patent from 1989 -
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US5236790A/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5236790A/en)

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cclark00
I just finished old reel-to-reel tape digitizing of family audio files going
back to 1953. Luckily they were stored in a cool dry place. I had to
cannibalize 2 players to get one working.

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samirsd
[https://polyanna.bandcamp.com](https://polyanna.bandcamp.com) we record all
our records on tape from recording to master.

~~~
sramsay
Tape fanatic here. Lovin' it. Can I get the details? What kind of machines are
you using? Is the whole toolchain analogue?

~~~
samirsd
hey thanks. yea we use fostex 8 track machines with 8 track mixers out to an
otari 2 track. Then we bounce to digital. we have a dedicated 2 track for tape
delay as well as an old Roland digital reverb unit. It’s a fun setup and it
never “crashes”! Haha

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arkanciscan
I hear injecting them with bleach helps too

