off topic
I seem to remember they had to stagger the heads to get 8 track sim recording to work. As I recall, the different manufacturers used different stagger factors which meant tape interchangeability was null
My 4-track porta was a bit better for that, but the Yamaha used DBX and the others Dolby C so still did not interchange. Now there are plugins to get the 'encoded but not decoded Dolby-A' sound, as if it was intended. Hrrrrr.