Potential problems w/ commercial open reel tapes

If you store your tapes in a box, find some of those Silica Gel packs that you see in boxes of stuff shipped from Japan to pack in with the tapes. Silica Gel is a desiccant and will lengthen the storage time of modern tapes as humidity is what causes analog tape to shed.

I have a collection of open reel tapes dating back to the late 1960's. I hadn't played them for a number of years due to my open reel's pinch roller and idler wheel having deteriorated. New rubber parts for Tandbergs are not available, so I had my rollers rebuilt a few months ago and things are now back to running fine. (A quick recommendation for Terry's Rubber Rollers if anyone is in the same boat.)

The biggest item I've noticed is the loss of volume with many of the tapes. Some of the plainer oxide formulas have lost 15 dB or more when watching the VU meters. (Maxell tapes have held up the best with very little loss.) The interesting thing is I would have expected a lot of high frequency loss but that has not been the case. The frequency spectrum is still balanced, but obviously the loss of volume adversely affects the signal-to-noise ratio.

I haven't had any problems with tape brittleness or breakage and oxide shedding hasn't been bad. I've had a number of leaders fall off due to the glue on the splice drying out, but that is easily fixed if you desire.

I'm transferring all of my tapes (and LPs and CDs) to digital as I want all of my music available on my music server for ease of access.

While I haven't had any big problems in playing tapes, I don't think I'd want to play them on a regular basis. Even if the tapes hold up, there is the issue of tape recorder maintenance and availability of specialty replacement parts such as heads, relays, switches, etc. I pretty much just use my open reel for transfer purposes these days. (Though I have to give it credit, my Tandberg 9200XD is a heck of a machine - it is over 30 years old and stills plays and sounds great. That's a real testament as nothing else in home audio has more moving parts than an open reel.)

They should hold up fine. A bit like saving your records by dubbing them to CD.