Here's the other half of my evaluation of the Last tape products.
Last makes a product called Tape Preservative. It comes in a 2 oz bottle or a larger supply. It comes with 4 foam applicators. a dropper, and 16 stickers for marking which tapes are treated. This fluid is supposed to increase the life of pre recorded tapes, reduce scrape flutter, lower distortion, reduce drop-outs, increase freq. response and extend the life of heads. Well, that's a pretty tall order. You apply it by saturating the swabs with the dropper and gently place the swab against the oxide side of the tape while the deck is at rewind or ff. You can reuse the swabs after cleaning any deposits off with alcohol and letting it dry completely.
Once again, I searched the Web thoroughly to find any opinion on this product but found no first hand accounts. There were some mention here and there which always included concerns about the products effects on the binders of the tape. If you're unfamiliar with problems with these binders and the so called, sticky shed syndrome, there is plenty of info here;
http://richardhess.com/notes/2007/03/21/soft-binder-syndrome-and-sticky-shed-syndrome/ There are many other interesting pages regarding tape restoration and archiving there. To test if the Last would damage the binders of the tapes in my collection I ran the following tests.
The tape treatment is in the same or similar medium as the head treatment. I actually spilled some on my hand and before I could look at the spot it landed on, it had evaporated. Because of this, I put a little at the bottom of a short bottle with a small mouth and a tight lid. I then went sifting though my collection to try and get a good sampling of tape formulas and backing types. I cut a short piece off of each of these and attached a scotch tape "handle" that could hang out of the top of the bottle and I could label it. So, one by one the tape samples spent a few minutes soaking. After pulling it out, I used a clean sheet of tp and did my best to rub some oxide off. Here's the tape types ( or mostly, the labels and catalog# of the recording)
RMGI 911
Quantagy 456
3M 226
Barclay-Crocker Ampex 642
Deutsche Gram. DGA 8803 Ampex-?
Angel Y2S-36300-cream colored reel
RCA FTC-2092 box states RCA red seal magnetic tape
Command Classics CC4T 11003 states MFD Grans Award Record Co.
Capital ZF-49 Scotch/3M ?
Vanguard VTC 1620 Ampex ?
Columbia MQ 877
Mercury MBS5-19
Many of these tapes are very old. But I did make an effort to get a good span of Ampex since it is the most frequently used on the prerecorded tapes you'll find. I'm sure a missed a few and if any of you can direct me to examples (labels and eras) I'll be happy to test them too. But, I think the results will be the same. Nothing. I looked at each example with a 10X magnifier before and after and could detect no change that would indicate any damage. So, it looks like Last did their research as far as binder solubility. But there's still that laundry list of claims.
I started treating tapes that are in my rejects stack. I'm crazy about the Berlioz Symphony Fantastique. I grew up with the Solti CSO recording and just like my moms potato salad, that's the way I like it. I've bought several copies and now have a pretty good one, but I still have one of the rejects that has dropouts and overall, just didn't sound as alive. So I treated the reject ( what could I loose?). I'd like to say that when applying the Last, it dries so fast that by the time it is going on the take-up reel, it's dry. Even though, after treating the whole tape, I wound it in the other direction just in case. The swab showed visible oxide residue which hardly surprised me but on closer inspection, there were fibers, and dirt. On playing the tape, the dropouts were almost all gone. A couple of spots that I thought were dropouts turned out to be damage to the tape. I could hear that now because, just like the head treatment, the noise floor had been lowered and revealed the details. The highs went a touch higher and were definitely clearer. The effects were overall similar to the improvements with the head treatment but much more subtle. I'd say maybe 1/4 >1/8 of what the head treatment did. When it comes right down to it, if this stuff hadn't done any improvement to the sound but extended the life of the tape 6-8X like the literature says, I'd be all for it. There is a hidden benefit too. I've tried using a lint free cloth to try and clean dropout causing dust and tape mites ( there must be some, they seem to be everywhere else after all) with inconsistent results. I've always thought that much of the dropout causing offenders are stuck to the tape by the pressure exerted on it from the tape wound above it. And just like a dirty window, a single swipe with a dry cloth never cleans as much as with a wet one. You can't use water ( that's what causes sticky tape shed) and alcohol will clean the oxide right off the tape. And the chemicals that used to be used are no longer off the shelf items (folks nowdays have a thing against cancer and brain damage,.. wimps!). So far, aside from the cost, this seems like a winner. I've treated 5 tapes and everything seems great,.. nothing "Wow" about this stuff, but like I said, if it does extend the tape life who cares.
Now I need to rig up some kind of delivery system that doesn't require you to stand there with the swab at just the right angle and " don't push that hard,.. that's not hard enough,.. oops now the angles wrong..."
At this point, I don't think I would use it on something as important as one of the Tape Project releases, but I've just started using it and in a few months, I just might.
An added note to the head treatment. Just like the Sound Guard that I used to use on my lp's, the head treatment makes cleaning the tape path much easier. For the most part, I can remove deposits with a dry Q tip.