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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 21st Nov 2022, 7:57 pm   #1
Chris55000
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Default Leader tape lengths?

Was there ever a specification quoted in Manufacturers' catalogues for the standard length of leader tape fitted to new spools of tape?

I managed to win a n.o.s. tape splicing kit at a reasonable price (no idea why these are so horrendously expensive!), so I want to tidy up all the odd cut/snapped ends of my tape collection with new leaders & stop–foils for my Philips N4416 project!

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Old 21st Nov 2022, 9:17 pm   #2
DMcMahon
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

Do not know if there ever was a standard length quoted but do know that there can be considerable differences in leader lengths across various tapes.

David
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Old 21st Nov 2022, 9:52 pm   #3
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

Agreed, I don't think there was a generally accepted standard for this. Most tapes didn't have a stop foil at all.
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Old 22nd Nov 2022, 1:33 am   #4
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

Most have at most a couple of turns of leader. About 2 feet or so. The exception were some tapes made for student machines in language laboratories, which often had 10 feet or more. This was to prevent the tape running off the reel during a class.

Paul, I have to disagree. There were many European tapes that always came supplied with stop foil - Philips, BASF, Agfa, Scotch, EMI to name just a few. The US brands rarely did.
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Old 23rd Nov 2022, 1:31 am   #5
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

. . .Then I'll find a new reel from my collection and see what length the leaders are and pick a figure from that, 2 feet ought to do me thinks!

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Old 23rd Nov 2022, 2:04 am   #6
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

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Originally Posted by Chris55000 View Post
. . .Then I'll find a new reel from my collection and see what length the leaders are and pick a figure from that, 2 feet ought to do me thinks!

Chris Williams
I'd go for quite a bit longer, probably 4 feet or more, especially if you have audio straight after the leader. I've got some Scotch reels here with only 3 feet of leader and, by the time I've laced them up on the Revox, the recorded part of the tape is only a few inches from the heads.
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Old 23rd Nov 2022, 8:19 am   #7
brenellic2000
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

Much depends on the market - amateur vs pro - and size of spool. 'Mastertape' used to offer their 3" correspondence tape with a short static induced plasticised tip to prevent unreeling. There was no consistency in colour between brands either - this was usually indicative of tape thickness.
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Old 23rd Nov 2022, 10:02 am   #8
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

When I volunteered at hospital radio we used to grab the leader tape, extend an arm and measure the resulting length to one’s nose. This gave about 3’. It’s long enough to start a roll of tape( a few seconds at 7.5” p/s) but not too long to be a nuisance. Sometimes we did go longer but this was discouraged as we were a charity. It was also common to re-use leader tape, or even splice pieces together.

There was an unofficial leader colour code, to aid engineers in selecting tape.

Various colours were used at the start of a tape( all half track or mono, no turning tapes over!)

Green. “Gash” tape. Recovered/spliced back together. May contain splices.
Blue. :Used but splice free
White. : New or “virgin “ tape. ie. Unused.

Yellow.: Separator Used between items or sections of tape. This was matt so could be written on.

Red & white striped. Special purpose tapes, such as test and alignment tapes etc.

Red. Always at the end.

All our jingle(cart) machines used a recorded bleep as a stop signal, so we never used the foil system.

Funny how one remembers things like this, and not what one did last week.

I bought some rolls of leader tape some years ago from ( ISTR) Canford Audio. I have no idea if it is still available.
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Old 23rd Nov 2022, 11:09 am   #9
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

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. . .Then I'll find a new reel from my collection and see what length the leaders are and pick a figure from that, 2 feet ought to do me thinks!

Chris Williams
If your deck uses a foil stop system and you don't want the tape to unthread on rewind (e.g. if you want to play the same tape again), I would suggest 4 or 5 feet.
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Old 28th Nov 2022, 11:38 pm   #10
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

I've got some "virgin" (unopened!) tapes with auto–stop foils so I'll see what length the leaders these have!

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Old 29th Nov 2022, 12:07 am   #11
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

Yes, as Ben says, a good rule of thumb is to have enough leader that on fast wind/rewind it doesn’t run off the spool after stopping has activated by the stop foil. Unless you prefer it to run off…

The longest amount of leader tape from new I ever had was on a Philips 10.5” spool. Seemed to go on for ever. At the time in 1972 the N4450 was the only domestic Philips machine capable of handling this size. I soon discovered why, after hitting the stop foil at speed it took so long to come to a halt that any less leader would have resulted in the tape flaying about off the spool! I m pretty sure that the tape was introduced specifically for this model.

If anyone is interested I’ll go and measure the length.

Peter
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Old 29th Nov 2022, 10:56 am   #12
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

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The longest amount of leader tape from new I ever had was on a Philips 10.5” spool. Seemed to go on for ever. At the time in 1972 the N4450 was the only domestic Philips machine capable of handling this size. I soon discovered why, after hitting the stop foil at speed it took so long to come to a halt that any less leader would have resulted in the tape flaying about off the spool! I m pretty sure that the tape was introduced specifically for this model.
Three motor decks can attain such velocity that often the braking system cannot cope, or requires a servo arrangemernt to slow the reels before they come on to avoid tape breakage. On the Tandbergs I've seen a voltage (26v?) is applied to the other reel motor at the start of the braking sequence so they don't just rely on the brake bands. For those decks you'd definitely need a couple of metres of leader tape.
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Old 29th Nov 2022, 1:10 pm   #13
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Default Re: Leader tape lengths?

The nice thing about PR99 Mk 2 and 3 was the Z locator, so you could set the stop !
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