The dangerous world of Reel-to-Reel Tape

@oldschool1948

I hope you mean that the dbx box preserved the dynamics of those recordings you were capturing. Me, I wouldn't want the original dynamics altered in any way when taping (it audibly "pumps" if you push dynamic restoration more than 5-8%).

I have an Akai open reel that's 7.5 ips only, but I've done some experiments with my 3bx and some old green-box EMI tape. The resulting recordings are slightly airless, but there's still more air there than digital! I must have 20 ways to play a cd or digital file, all with different results, none do "air" well.

As for recording your vinyl today, surely your phono preamp before the BHK has a fixed line-out. You could use a splitter cable at that point, send the signal to the BHK Pre AND the tape deck or dbx box at the same time. Then monitor your recordings thru the BHK in your chosen tape input.

@kraftwerkturbo  I have a mix-tape cassette I made of college radio tracks from 1983 (dubbed from my then-new records) and it stall plays quite well! It's a Memorex Type II with Dolby B.

On commercial open-reel I have a Tom Jones s/t album on Parrot, Wonderland Of Bert Kaempfert, J. Lennon's Plastic Ono Band on Apple and owned (but recently sold) Hendrix' Band Of Gypsies on Capitol, all original 7.5 ips tapes printed & sold around 1968-71, all still play great.

This might be familiar to all but it bears repeating: Vintage BASF and EMItape don't sticky shed but Ampex does. The difference between these is formulation, and where the former two use whale blubber oil as a binder, Ampex used petroleum derivatives. This change took place presumably because whale hunting is sadistic & unethical, and in the early seventies became a hot potato outside of Japan.