Scott Colburn

Remember:

“Blue” means “Tails Out”!

“Red” means “Heads Out”

It tells you what side of the machine you put the reel so it doesn’t play backwards.

It’s commonly known that you should always store analog tapes “Tails out” meaning that you have to rewind the reel before playback. This puts the print through AFTER the event.

If you want to hear what I mean, Listen to Led Zeppelin “Black Dog”. You will hear Robert Plant’s intro very quietly BEFORE the actual event. This was improper tape storage.

Because analog tape is magnetic based, each layer of tape is wound on top of itself and the magnetics interact over time causing what we call print through where the sound that is before or after the actual sound prints through or “records” itself before or after the actual event depending on how you wound the tape.

Winding tails out puts it after the event and therefore hidden from view.

In radio, ads were sent heads out, so it was quick to play the ad. Maybe that industry didn’t care about fidelity.