Troubleshooting Mamiya C330: Part 2

I previously described my efforts to troubleshoot some vertical lines showing up on the negatives taken from my C330. Suspecting problems with the reel, I shot a second roll of Tri-x, all frames of the same scene. When I loaded the film for developing this time, I reversed the direction of the roll so that it loaded frame #1 first.  You can see the results here:

Frame #1, loaded onto reel first.

Frame #12, loaded onto reel last.

This time, there was no difference in the frames; the vertical lines showed up equally in both.  Back to the drawing board, although I still suspect reel issues. The next time I load onto the reel, I'm actually going to do so upside down and see if that makes a difference. If it does, I will have solved my problem. If not, then it really is back to the drawing board.

Which brings me to my last point: Even though I've narrowed it down to a developing issue, there's still the nagging feeling that's not it. I don't get this problem with my Zero Image pinhole, although it's been several weeks since I've used that camera. In Part 3 I'll show the results from upside-down reel loading and discuss some next steps from there.