Definition of "reel-to-reel" [reel-to-reel]

• Designating sound recording equipment or sound recordings that use magnetic tape which must be threaded through the equipment and onto an empty reel. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Meanwhile, in the Eastern Bloc, the introduction of reel-to-reel tape recorders in the 1960s helped create a vast underground culture of fans of rock, rhythm and blues, and later disco and hip-hop."
• "There, stiff and rumpled from being in storage so long, was a leather jacket with a rainbow colored flower motif, some old boots, dozens of melted records, burned-out speakers, charred beads, monopoly pieces, soot-covered reel-to-reel tapes, pieces of a porcelain toilet and beer cans - lots of beer cans ..."
• "An illustration of a reel-to-reel tape machine graces the cover of "Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World," the first biography of the renegade folklorist who, says John Szwed, "changed not only how everyone listened to music but even how they viewed America.""