EE reel tape

[coloradosound]

I have an Akai GX-747 deck and have been coming across
various Maxell XLII 35-180 and TDK SA reels. Some have the brown
35's on the leaders, some have brown arrows, some have red arrows.
And I also found one that has a black crosshatch
pattern on it. So which one are the real "Extra Efficiency" reels
I suspect that cheaper
non-EE tape was put onto the XLII takeup reels.

[Instroverb]

I do know that the crosshatch is a pattern for timing tape. It should register 1 second/crosshatch depending on the speed of the machine. I think the arrows indicate tails out or head in. Just a guess.

[Beck]

I would ignore the leaders and look at the tape itself, since someone could splice on different leaders. The Maxell XLII EE has no backcoating and the tape is darker compared to the regular UD or UD XLI. But be careful that you don’t mistake the backcoating on an XLI for the darker color I’m talking about. You have to look at the business side of the tape… the side that touches the heads.

If you had all three to compare they would look like this relative to each other:

XLI – Light brown with black backcoating
UD – Darker brown with no backcoating
XLII EE – grey/black with no backcoating (should look about the same color as XLII cassette)

I never used TDK SA in reel-to-reel, but EE tapes are generally grayer in color since they are basically the same formulas as a company’s Type II cassettes put on a thicker ¼” tape.