Leader, Splice Tape, Tape Editing Accessories

TAPE EDITING ACCESSORIES - LEADER, AUTO END OF TAPE, SPLICE TAPE, SPLICE BLOCK, BLADES

 Your tape project deserves to be finished properly using coloured leader tape at the beginning, between sections and at the end. You may also want to auto stop between sections or indeed finely edit short sections of superfluous sections or noise out before an/or after a track ends. Our range of materials and tools allows you to make slick professional edits and finish off your tape project properly.

 All our non magnetic tapes are new fresh manufactured in the UK or EU. Be very careful of NOS tape materials offered cheaply as they may be 20+ years old and frustrate you getting a professional finish to your project.

LEADER TAPE is a nonmagnetic tape at the beginning and or end of a reel or as a marking for the beginning of a selection within the tape. You can usually see coloured tape on a fully wound reel and thus it enables quick selection and spooling to a particular track or section of your project. Coloured leader is available in three colours – white, green and red. You could for example use all three colours like this:- green indicating the beginning of the tape, red to demarcate sections or tracks within the reel and white at the end.

CLEAR LEADER TAPE is transparent tape that enables the auto stop system on most commercial tape recorders and some professional machines (not all had this facility). A short section of 5 – 20cm will stop a machine between recordings and/or at the end / beginning of your tape in spooling or play modes. In rewind or fast forward, used in conjunction with beginning and end leader tape, it is really convenient, as the tape then does not run off the end of the reel. In addition, on some machines that have auto rewind / play functionality, by splicing in clear leader at the beginning and end of a section or song, it can be automatically repeated or rewound.

SPLICE TAPE is special sticky tape that allows you to join two pieces of tape (on the outside of the tape) or splice in leader or clear leader. Usually one would use approx 1 – 4cm per splice at angled or straight cuts.

EDITING SPLICE BLOCKS are durable accurately machined metal template blocks to hold your tape in place and precisely achieve accurate cuts and splices.   They usually have angled and perpendicular cut guide slits which enables an accurate aligned cut to be made using a special razor sharp TAPE CUTTING BLADE which is included.

GUIDELINES

A COMPLETE TAPE EDITING KIT you can make up a complete kit with the splice block, splice tape and leader tape (select colour and quantity / packaging options) by selecting the individual components.  

COLOURED and CLEAR LEADER TAPES are available as:

• a pancake hub of 250m (820 ft) [~ 47 mins at 3.75 “/sec) which you need to be very careful handling and fit to a NAB reel to use.
• On 7” plastic reels with a protective care box in 250m (820ft)
• On 7” plastic reels with a protective care box in 500m(1640 ft).
• Colour - green, clear, white, red.  In notes please indicate 2nd choice in case we dont have stock of the particular colour

HOW MUCH LEADER?

• Coloured Leader: beginning and end 10 – 20 secs or 50 - 80cm (20 - 40”) between tracks within the tape reel
• Auto stop clear leader ~ 10 – 20cm (4 – 8”)
• Auto stop clear leader at beginning / end in conjunction with coloured leader. This depends on your machine and its spooling speed / braking. A ballpark is ~ 10cm clear leader + minimum 4m coloured leader (20 secs at 7.5”/sec – the no. of secs depends on tape speed!)

STICKY SPLICE TAPE is ¼” blue in 25m (82ft) rolls. – usually enough for more than a thousand splices