Originally Posted by
Ronsonic
I'm thinking of what I saw in the late 70s early 80s and my recollection is that cloth tape was over. Sure they make it now and we think it's cool. But nothing is ever fashionable right after its era. The cool kids were all using the celo tape. The cork tape does go back over twenty years, but this is a thirty year old bike and I don't think the stuff existed when the OP's bike was built. I could be wrong, but that's my recollection of the era. At least I was having fun with the Benotto tape and would replace it almost monthly playing with different colors and patterns.
This is balderdash. I built a bike in 1985, and cloth tape was still very much at large then. Sure, all the racerboys were using that hard, non-absorbent, unforgiving plastic tape by then, but I'm willing to bet Ronsonic $5 that it wasn't available in 1977 (show me a catalog). I had a 1981 Miyata 912 for a few weeks that had the Benotto tape on it; peeled it off, and what was beneath? Yellow Tressostar. The Japanese make the nicest cloth tape now, I hear.