Maybe it doesn't much matter, but --
As we all know, Bill Lear (of Learjet fame) is the inventor of the 8 track and made loads of loot from this thing in the 70s. Helped keep Learjet in bizness during some tough times before they were passed around to other billionaires -- at one time known as Gates Learjet having been purchased by the very rich Gates Tire and Rubber having recently given birth to Bill Gates.
I don't know about everyone, but being raised this close to the Learjet factory, we seemed to have a lot more exposure to 8 tracks what with them demonstrating them in our schools and such.
By 72 or 73, fairly high quality transports were coming available what with the format lending itself to the new and exciting Quadraphonic recordings everyone was panting about.
In answer to your question, this alignment tape isn't as hackneyed as it might appear. Where a consumer deck had simply a plastic ratchet and pawl to drag the heads to the next track, the "pro" grade stuff actually had several adjustments, both mechanical and electronic (those pesky transformers, you know). Like a derailleur, there were adjustable stops. I've seen them, just don't ask me the equipment models because, hey, who cares?
The format is destructive and was doomed for failure and rumor has it that Lear knew this even as he was inking hugely lucrative deals with people like Pioneer and Craig. The tape is always rubbing against itself, being dragged from the core of the pancake. As the pancake was feeding from the center but spooling to the outside, there was never a time that tape wasn't scuffing against itself throughout the motion.
There is no real pinch and captain roller like a cassette or reel unit (though it's called that) because there is no 'pinch' (a steel pin against a rubber roller). The roller inside the tape is shoved against the head by the same spring that retains the casing. The little roller inside was called the 'pinch' roller, but before long, these went from cheap rubber to cheap plastic - and forget about bearings, of course. So slippage, distortion, and erosion was predictably endemic.
If i can find them, i have some never-used blank 8-tracks used for recording (!) as you would a cassette. Labelled as the house brand from K-Mart, no less.
On the good side, it paved the way for cassettes in cars and homes.
