Not sure if anyone else has experienced the pains of
receiving partial reels with a leader affixed with a brass
joiner. Totally jammed my 10x8mm so ended up ripping
them off in disgust.
Is there any sane alternative?
Sometimes they aren't assembled very well so the brass shim makes the tape wider than it should be. Same applies with sticky tape joiners too mind.
Only time I had anything get stuck was a very thick paper tape (actually thicker than the specification for tape allows) and where it was joined to the trailer it was just too thick, though well over the maximum thickness it should have been anyway. That was 10u 0603 ceramic caps as I recall. And it did get stuck pretty well!