A note of caution

[Ferretfancy]

I've just gone to my shelves to sample an item from the Chandos 3 disc set of Rimsky Korsakov Suites. The discs are in a box with notes and unfortunately they also have two squares of sponge padding.
Beware! This material degrades to a gluey tack which has cemented itself onto two of the discs, luckily on the label side. I have, I hope, been able to clean them up without total disaster, and I thought that I had checked all my boxed sets, but missed this one. If you have any boxes of this kind which you haven't listened to lately, check them out.

[Petrushka]

I think you gave out this warning on the old BBC boards and that prompted me to check all of the oldest boxed sets in my collection. Some of the sponge padding had turned brown while others had disintegrated into a sticky mess but everything was saveable and played ok. Oddly, in some cases the sponge looked brand new and was still snow white!

If you have any boxes from the early days of CD and haven't opened them in ages I'd heed FF's warning and check them now,

[Thomas Roth]

My Karajan Tosca (DG) ended up in the bin for that reason.

[Bryn]

My Karajan Tosca (DG) ended up in the bin for that reason.

Did you not try soaking the stuck-up CDs in warm, lightly detergent laden, water before binning them? Such a procedure worked for me with a couple of discs with foam adhering firmly to them.

[Stunsworth]

This material degrades to a gluey tack which has cemented itself onto two of the discs, luckily on the label side

The label side of a CD is the more fragile of the two as in effect it's the underside of the label that stores the digital information.

[gurnemanz]

They should surely state that this material is only to protect the CDs during despatch. Without thinking about the problem mentioned, I have luckily always been in the habit of throwing it away because having more space makes it easier to retrieve discs from the box.

[Roehre]

This happens with all sponge paddings of what provenance whatever: I've got Philips (its 1990 Complete Mozart !), Chandos, DG, EMI releases where this deterioration took place. It also happens with the same kind of padding in LP-sets. It took me quite a while to remove the plastic stuck to the libretti and luxuriously printed documentation in the 1977 DGG Beethoven Edition and the 1978 Philips Mozart Edition e.g.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for the warnings. I hope I'm OK with this but I recall the Drottningholm Mozart operas (Decca/OL) having such foam. However many of the boxes have been opened recently in order to rip CDs to HD, so probably fine. I think some of the foam was crumbling, and some going brown. I'll go back and bin it.