I was a bit surprised a while ago looking at the erase head of my Tascam 244 - it seems the track layout is staggered and not in-line. I wondered why this is? I remember seeing that bias currents for some erase heads can be as high as 70 mA and working voltages as high as 20V or so. This would mean something like a Watt or more being dissipated for each channel. Is this heating effect the reason for the staggered design and is it common in multitrack machines? I'm surprised with this much power it doesn't lead to heating up of the tape when set on pause!