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Dunno whether it's relevant, but one of the problems with old tapes is that the polyester support shrinks slightly, This makes the wind-on on the reel tighter and exacerbates print-through. It might help simply by rewinding the tape at daily intervals for a week or two (although this will not help the print-through). It is a good idea to rewind VHS tapes systematically every few months (easy the say this after the event 
) to keep them in good condition and to not store them in either a low- or a high-humidity environment (40 - 70 RH is ideal) or an environment with large changes of temperature or humidity. If tapes are subjected to extremes of either, rewind them immediately and again 24 hours after normal environments are restored. Of course, all this is independent of degradation of the magnetic remanence, which should not be serious in under 10 years or so. Thin tapes (long play) are worse than thicker ones for all these problems. Archives should always be recorded on the thickest base possible: better to spill a film over to a second tape than try to squeeze it on to a single one, if permanence is likely to be an issue.
) to keep them in good condition and to not store them in either a low- or a high-humidity environment (40 - 70 RH is ideal) or an environment with large changes of temperature or humidity. If tapes are subjected to extremes of either, rewind them immediately and again 24 hours after normal environments are restored. Of course, all this is independent of degradation of the magnetic remanence, which should not be serious in under 10 years or so. Thin tapes (long play) are worse than thicker ones for all these problems. Archives should always be recorded on the thickest base possible: better to spill a film over to a second tape than try to squeeze it on to a single one, if permanence is likely to be an issue.
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