Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

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Re: Notches

Posted by Flyquail56 (A) on January 2, 2007 at 15:06:52

In Reply to: Re: questions regarding bias and eq posted by Vinnie on January 2, 2007 at 14:10:27:

Maybe I can help to clarify. A cassette tape shell can have as many as three pairs of notches, knockouts, detector slots, or whatever we want to call them. The outboard most pair is to prevent accidental erasure of the tape. Blank tapes have tabs to break out of this location after the tape is recorded. Prerecorded tapes, it is already out obviously. Just inboard of these is the next pair of slots. These are open if the tape is Type II (70 uS), no opening for Type I (120uS). Many cassette decks have sensors to automatically select the proper EQ based on these notches. The third pair of notches is much closer to the center of the top edge, about 1/2 inch apart from each other. These slots are open on Type IV, or metal tapes.

So, if your machine does not have automatic tape type sensing, and the prerecorded tape does not have any other indication, just check the number of open tabs on the tape, and set the EQ accordingly :-). HTH

Best regards,
Mike

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