I'm very excited to share a significant upgrade of this notable show today, on the "24th of May"!
The general details about the recording and concert can be found above, however I felt that the full story of the tape itself should be shared too.
This tape was originally liberated and shared by
Max Webster archivist Bob (Sir_GH / The Real Wizard) in 2017. He later sent this tape to me in spring 2025, along with three Max Webster tapes (opening for Rush at this CNE 1977 show, plus two Max Webster headline gigs from 1976), which were all recorded by Adam Sherban. We knew the tapes should benefit from a new transfer on my Nakamichi DR-1 and with proper azimuth adjustment, but I was informed of a detrimental issue: these tapes have a shedding problem and needed "baking" first. I was told that there were several transfer attempts in 2017, and that the released version was then-considered a stark improvement after being baked. So how much better could it sound now with this 2026 release? Surprisingly, it's a night and day difference.
For shedding cassettes, using a small food dehydrator is all you need, set somewhere between 120-135 degrees Fahrenheit. Note that these dehydrators don't all seem to have an accurate temperature display, so placing in an old meat thermometer with a round clock-like face is a good way to gauge the true temperature. On mine, setting to 130 F was in truth only reaching 122 F (50 C), though setting it to 135 put it somewhere over 140. You do not want your tape in prolonged temperatures of 140-150 F. As for how long to keep it in, I find that there is no definitive ballpark time. Though a good starting point would be to attempt 8-12 hours, give it a few hours to cool, test a transfer, then if needed add more hours until the issue goes away.
Both the CNE Max Webster tape (60 min) and CNE Rush tape (90 min) are "BASF LH SM" stock and suffered heavily with shedding, with the Rush by far being the most difficult to deal with. Back in June 2025, while the initial 9 hours baking the Max Webster tape didn't fully stop the sound from getting muddied, going up to 15 hours did the trick. Fairly simple process overall. I also want to note that I was not attempting to bake nor transfer these tapes while inside of their original shells, the tapes are baked loose, and then played in a newer shell.
For this Rush tape, I didn't keep track of how many hours I baked it June 2025, but looking through old messages, I think it all added up to 26 hours over at least four baking sessions, all to no avail. Every time I played the tape, it would start sounding like it were underwater after 15-20 minutes. What it kept doing was caking brown residue on the pinch rollers, capstans, and the tape heads, the latter where it was also leaving loose particles. As bad as that sounds, the tape itself would never show visual signs of damage. It's not the same issue as "Sticky Shed Syndrome" found on reel to reel tapes. In fact, I was told that when this tape was baked in 2017, it was for only 12 hours at 50 C, and I can tell by listening to the old transfer that it wasn't shedding anymore. It was just, with all respect, not the best transfer.
Greatly discouraged by the continued lack of success, the stress of constantly cleaning inside the deck, and becoming increasingly busy with a large side project, I didn't touch the tape again until April 2026. This time, the tape received 45 hours of baking at 122 F (50 C) over four days during that week. I felt that if 45 hours didn't work, probably nothing would. Well we got lucky. Though the initial transfer attempt after the 45 hours still wasn't looking that great, the tape was running noticeably slower, and any attempt to fast-forward/rewind had the motor noticeably straining. I felt my only option was to manually wind the tape by hand from one end to the other then back. This successfully loosened it back up and ran at its normal speed. Yet after about 15 minutes of playing, moderate muffle was becoming noticeable, though not nearly as bad as last year. Nearly discouraged again, I figured on cleaning, rewinding 10 minutes, play it, stop when needed, then repeat the process and run multiple passes that I could stitch together later. Though I noticed after two passes and cleans, the third pass that reached the end of that side after running 26 minutes had zero muffling, and there was no mess in the deck. This was a massive relief learning that the 45 heavy hours of baking did indeed fully stop the shedding, and that it then only needed some residue to be rubbed off.
With the fourth pass, I decided to start back at the beginning and hopefully transfer it in one go. Well about halfway into that side of the tape, the deck suddenly stopped. There was no muffling or shedding, but it seemed it was tightening up again. So I did a quick bit of manual winding, then started the transfer again several minutes prior to where it stopped. This successfully reached the end of that side of the tape. I figured it best to get the full tape side with those two passes instead of starting over again, in case the tape snapped before I got everything transferred.
Now flipping to the other side, I was hoping it would be just as simple. Well it stopped about 16 minutes in, so I tried a bit of manual winding again, but the deck kept stopping every 4-8 seconds. So I decided on another full hand wind one end to the other and back. Not a fun way to spend an hour, and to my annoyance, that only helped briefly this time. This time the tape stopped about 25 minutes in, and with each of my further attempts of several minutes of hand winding, it was stopping again every few seconds. I then read that slamming a cassette down on a flat surface can help with this issue, so I slammed it on my desk a handful of times, and to my surprise that did help, and the tape was able run for another 5 minutes before stopping. I then repeated the slamming, played the tape, slammed it again when it stopped after 8 minutes, then once again after 7 minutes, then finally got to play to the end of the tape.
While I really wanted to run each side of the tape in one uninterrupted pass, the tape wasn't having it. With the tensioning issue, I also feared it was only a matter of time before the tape broke. I at least now had every part of the tape transferred in crystal clear audio, it would just need stitching together, so this is what I decided to do. I assure you that when I was using the overlapping audio to find a segment to match, I zoomed in down to the "microscopic" sample to be certain I was combining the parts at the precise bit of audio to where everything still looked identical afterward. Therefore there would zero traces that the transfer was ever done in more than one pass. I can also assure that any occasional oddities you may hear during the recording are just part of the recording itself. The multiple passes made it easy to compare that there was nothing getting in front of the play head during the final pass, and you can also hear the same oddities in the 2017 version.
So on that note, to keep this from becoming way too long-winded, I'll leave it here. Special thanks to Bob for the opportunity to work on this tape, and to our mutual friend "beyondthemoon" for helping with the speed adjustment. This was no doubt the most frustrating tape I've ever had to work with, but in the end it was a worthwhile success. Hopefully this helps encourage some people out there to not throw away their tapes even if it may seem like unsalvageable garbage.
Below are two pictures: on the left are both the Rush and Max Webster 1977-08-23 tapes, and on the right shows the nasty inside of the Rush shell when I opened it for the first time.
