Exactly. It's an art in itself. A cross fade was laying the diagonal cuts of two strips onto each other at the seam. Your fade time what the angle of the cut. DAWs visualize that but it used to be an actual cut. Wild times back then. Digital completely took over right after I left college and it's a shame because there's something special in there that makes every edit mean something. With no Ctrl-Z, every cut is a commitment.

If you look up pics of old iconic rock master reels, some of those things look like a Frankenstein monster. But once they put it on wax for sale, you'd never know the reels looked like hot garbage.