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In case anyone isn't clear on this, here's how we approach leadering your tapes: We give you a head leader so you can locate the beginning of program, and we put a pad of blank tape before the head leader, like Doc said above. That's so that if you overshoot the leader when winding back to the front it won't come off the machine and you won't have to rethread it. It's just a courtesy, given our assumption that you will always be storing your tapes tails out and rewinding before play. (You will, wont you? And storing them flatwound, too?)
We leader at the end so you know program is over, then we put a pad of blank after that just for a little extra protection. If something slips when you've just loaded the machine and started to fast wind back, the worst that can happen is stretching a little of the blank pad; your recorded portion is safe.
Our normal procedures would leave between a second and four seconds between the leaders and program material.
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And I appreciate the hell out of this effort! When I received my first tape I was puzzled by this technique. Then after rewinding a few times and learning to watch for the leader, then hit stop, I realized the genius of leaving the nice pad of tape at the beginning. First class effort.... Many thanks!
Ken