50 years ago I was into R2R and the first thing I did with all my albums was record them at 15 IPS from the new vinyl. At that point I had complete collections of the Stones, Les Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers and more. Then I got into 4 Channel but was limited to buying prerecorded material.
It was quite the journey, but life intervened and divorce dismantled my system and my musical world at that time. The only downside as I recall was the inability to quickly find a specific track and switch and what I wanted to hear. It was terrific at putting on music that lasted longer than one side of an album.
I miss it, but time has not been kind to the genre. I hope enough people get into R2R so that it can make a comeback where more choices are available for those who have discovered its merits and understand the shortcomings.