Serious question about storing tapes in a hot car...

I left a box of my dad's old Maxell XLIIs in my truck for 3 days during that 95 degree stretch last July. It took me about 6 hours of careful rewinding and playing to figure out why half of them were warbly and shedding oxide. Has anyone else lost good tapes to heat damage like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_skyler27d ago

Used to think tape was pretty tough stuff until I melted a bunch of my own. I had a huge collection of prerecorded cassettes from the 80s and left them in my trunk for just one afternoon. They were so bad by the time I got home, the sound was all warped and wonky. Now I keep every tape I care about inside my house or in a cooler with an ice pack when I’m moving them. Heat is a KILLER for these things, total lesson learned.

thea24627d ago

Oh man, that hurts to read. I've done the same thing with a batch of TDK SAs I left in a hatchback during a heatwave. Fixed a few by baking them at 130F for 8 hours in a food dehydrator, but the ones that got cooked too long never really sounded right again. Best advice I can give you is to never leave them in direct sun or a closed car for more than an hour, even if you think it's not that hot. The plastic shells warp just enough to mess with the tape path, and the oxide binder gets soft and sticky. For long trips I wrap them in a towel or put them in a cooler with a frozen water bottle wrapped in a cloth. Also, let them sit at room temp for a full day before you try to play them if they've been in heat.