Once the VHS tape makes contact and vaporises, you get a nice "electrical" arc, which is really a nice ionised plasma arc between two high powered conductors...

Once the VHS tape makes contact and vaporises, you get a nice "electrical" arc, which is really a nice ionised plasma arc between two high powered conductors... you get a lot of "side effects" ... such as an even bigger arc, fires, potentially explosions depending on transformer placement, etc... Above 33kV ... you get a lot of "bang" from basically any thing that touches across the conducting wires... unwound VHS tape, mylar, string, fishing wire, ... unless it's less conductive than air ... you're in for a bad time.