I see everyone endlessly complaining about sticky shed syndrome the second a reel squeals or stops turning, but nobody ever wants to examine their own maintenance habits. Half the people posting here are running quarter inch tape on unserviced decks from the sevinties with pinch rollers that turned into solid rock. Everyone jumps straight to throwing their tapes into a food dehydrator without even checking if their capstan belt is slipping or if they accumulated oxide dust on the guide path. Sure, binder degradation exists on specific Ampex stock, but assuming every playback issue requires heat treatment is ridiculous. You are probably just destroying decent tape with unnecessary baking cycles because you refuse to spend five minutes with some alchohol and a cotton swab.