Reel to reel , is it real the hype!

two decks is a good way to go. And as one poster mentioned, making a play copy is not a bad way to go, since if its a fav piece of music, you can play it to death and simply make another copy if need be. 

For those of you with MTR decks (10 or 12) and stock electronics, here is a very simple change you can make. If you slide out the two audio cards from their rack rails, directly behind the card faceplate, you will find 6 0.1uf red kidney colored caps. These are bypasses on the rail voltages coming into the card. Replace all six on each card with 0.1uf Nichicon XY series foil and film cap. These nichicons can be sourced from mouser or digikey. will cost you about 12 -15 bucks in parts. when installed the new caps will remove a blanket that was covering your speakers. The stock caps were metalized film, not as open sounding as film and foil. Takes about 15 min per card to do the change. If you do not feel comfortable doing it, plenty of techs that can do the change for you. 

@johnss blank tapes are very expensive. Doesn’t seem to be worthwhile having 2 copies of same .. except for critical listening I would use digital … as I mentioned earlier, my digital setup the sound is very close if not similar (dsd) .
is there a source for cheap tapes so I can make copies of my vinyl, selected few .
my mtr 10 the caps have all been replaced but I don’t know the details of the replacement. 

@newtoncr blank tape may not be cheap, but high end R2R is not a budget hobby. If you have a production master of something like the Beatles' Revolver, it is something to be cherished and cared for. Every pass you make over the tape heads will degrade the tape by a very small amount. Production masters are pretty much irreplaceable. It's the tape version of an LP lacquer (albeit more robust).
If you copy your USD 500-1000 production master once onto new tape and also onto digital, you will have absolutely the best quality source for your music. Play the copy or digital file as much as you like - its won't matter if you shred the tape copy or corrupt the digital dupe. You will still have your original master to run another copy off carefully, before storing the master again.
USD 60-80 may not be cheap for a blank tape, but blank tape is relatively easily available. Production masters aren't.

@topoxforddoc agreed , I am making digital copies of the master and using the masters only for critical listening. 

@newtoncr, check out tapetape.com. He sells new tape one pass tape from studios. He normally has quite a selection. 
And need to remember the 60-80 bucks for a new blank tape is about the same as the 25 dollars for a new blank 40 years ago, if you figure in inflation and devaluation of the buck. If you have a lot of tapes, you may find that only a few get played a lot. the rest will get infrequent play. Besides the deck maint, one of the biggest issues with tape is the storage space required to hold them all.