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I loath AGFA PEM 468 and 469!  We have a lot of it, hundreds of reels
unfortunately.  With our sorting process I have discovered just how many
and it gives me nightmares inbetween dodging the quakes!

I tried baking and found it had limited success.  The pellon wipe and
plenty of cleaning of the tape path was a must and yes, it does have that
weird waxy stuff that comes off.

This is one tape brand that the Isopropyl drip machine worked on quite
successfully.  Or, we could just invent a new method - the Shake/Drip
method or Shake&Bake ;-)

Cheers
Marie

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Richard L. Hess
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hi, good folks. I get completely confused by Agfa tapes. I don't see that
> many of them here in North America, and they often seem to surprise me with
> their nastiness.
>
> Today's tape is a 10.5" reel of 1" 16 Track Agfa PEM469. It was recorded
> at the end of January 1988.
>
> On my degrading tapes page, I have listed under SSS as generally
> responding to baking this note:
>
> *Agfa PEM 468, PEM 469* (a half-year's worth of batches pre-1990) Note,
> there are mixed reviews on these tapes and most of the bad tape was
> recalled and transferred at Agfa's expense. See below,   however, for other
> Agfa issues. Unike Ampex/Quantegy, we do NOT recommend baking Agfa tapes as
> a matter of course.
>
> Then, later on the page under the heading:
>
> *Back-coat turning to powder and causing spacing loss* (seems to respond
> to wiping)
>
> *Agfa PEM-526* exhibited this odd behaviour. See our article here <
> http://richardhess.com/notes/**2009/01/30/back-coat-turning-**to-powder/<http://richardhess.com/notes/2009/01/30/back-coat-turning-to-powder/>>.
> A similar condition was reported with
>
> *Agfa PEM-469*, see this article <http://www.tomshardware.co.**
> uk/forum/page-42797_32_0.html<http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-42797_32_0.html>
> >**. Do NOT bake these tapes. It won't help and may hurt.
>
> Ok, so that is what I think I know about this tape.
>
> The current tape is showing some features of SSS, but what is happening is
> a whitish, yellowish waxy substance is coming off on the heads and on the
> Pellon. There appears to be some oxide transfer to the back-coat because
> the capstan which touches the back has become brown.
>
> I am nervous to bake these tapes. I have a second one and I'd rather not
> have to do it in segments. Any suggestions
>
> The link for the PEM-469 has Mike Rivers saying,
>
> "Stand back, let it shed, and clean the tape deck's heads and guides
> as often as necessary. Lots of this tape shedded large piles of oxide
> even when it was new. There's nothing you can do about it to make it
> better, but you've discovered one way to make it worse. Don't bake
> the other reels. "
>
> So, that's what I'm doing, but the waxy exudate on the Pellon is new to
> me. I've seen other Agfa tapes have dry dust, but this is waxy and
> yellow-white, not brown, not black.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions. The transfer is working well. The tape has a
> timecode track and I stop when I see it waver ever so slightly and clean.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> --
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada           (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> http://www.richardhess.com/**tape/contact.htm<http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm>
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>