Al Kossow wrote: A good question, but what I have are "dry tapes". The oxide is in fine shape but has lost it's lubrication. If a tape is in really bad shape and is at risk of loosing oxide or has mold on it, then I would never use a cleaner. Or if the media had so much moisture in it that it was gumming up the heads, I would not use a cleaner. However, the cleaner has uses other than cleaning. I'd like to use the cleaner with the cleaning turned off (basically the tape lifted above the cleaning wheel) to retension the tape. I'd also like to use it to relubricate the tape. The tapes I have did not respond to baking. The will read ok for bit but eventually start "sqeeking" and won't pass over the read head cleanly. This appears to be due to a lack of lubrication. I did an experiment where I basically hand reeled the tape over a roller with silicone and the tape then read perfectly. This matches with some of the documentation I've found which talks about common problems with older tapes. Some audio folks recommended using a silcone based lubricant (sparingly, very sparingly). I found it worked and didn't appear to harm the tape at all. If I had a vacume column drive which floated the tape over the heads without contact I suspect this would not be a problem :-) but I don't have access to such a drive. (actually, do such drives even exist? even the nice ibm drives I used to use would run the tape over the heads - I know because we had to clean them) -brad