Magnetic head and system having offset arrays

A computer program product for orienting a head, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions readable and/or executable by a controller to cause the controller to:

• determine, by the controller, a state of expansion of a magnetic tape based on a readback signal of the tape;
• determine, by the controller, a desired pitch for transducers for reading and/or writing to the tape based on the expansion of the tape;
• and
• control, by the controller, a mechanism for orienting a head having the transducers based on the state of expansion of the tape, the head having at least two opposing modules generally aligned with each other in an intended direction of tape travel thereacross, positions of the two modules being fixed relative to each other, each module having an array of the transducers, wherein an axis of each array is defined between opposite ends thereof, wherein the array of a first of the modules is offset from the array of a second of the modules in a first direction parallel to the axis of the array of the second module such that the transducers of the first module are about aligned with the transducers of the second module in the intended direction of tape travel thereacross when the axes are oriented at an angle between greater than 0.25° and about 5° relative to a line oriented perpendicular to the intended direction of tape travel,
• wherein determining the state of expansion of the tape includes orienting the head to orient the axes at an angle greater than 0.2° relative to the line oriented perpendicular to the intended direction of tape travel during acquisition of the readback signal of the tape, the readback signal being derived from the transducers of the modules of the parallel arrays.