Nothing says lovin’ like freshly baked tapes from the oven! Here’s some audio reels just cooling off after 8 hours of baking. What you see here is a 10″ NAB tape core removed from the metal flanges. Why did we bake them? Because certain brands of audio tape become very sticky in storage due to the tape binder absorbing water molecules. The tapes become like tree sap, and cannot be played until they are carefully dried out with a gentle baking process. It works quite well! Once these tapes cool off, they will be smooth and dry for about 24 hours. Just long enough for one more playback to high resolution digital audio files. Typical brands of tape that require baking are Ampex 406, 407, 456, 457 and Scotch 206, 207, and 250.
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