Nobody loves open reel tape more than I do, but it's a really impractical medium unless you DO love it. You can't find any particular track on a 7" reel without searching endlessly and you sure can't find it on a 10 1/2" reel. So you pretty much have to play the whole thing, like it or not. If your back-coated tape is attacked by "sticky shed syndrome" you might as well throw it out (yeah, I know, there's a fix, but still).
All the commercial reels date from the 60s to 80s (Jim Nabors vocalizing, anyone?) and many have had their high frequencies destroyed from being played with magnetized tape heads. New raw tape is expensive. The machines are mostly 30 years old AT LEAST and tend to be finicky and in need of regular service by too-few tape techs. If you still want to get into this "hair shirt" medium, don't say I didn't warn you :-)
So why do I love it? Because some of the tapes are simply stunning sonically. The sound of open reel tape in general is addictive (but stick to at least 7 1/2 IPS tape speed; slower-speed tape tends to really suck). And you can't beat the sight of those spinning reels.
All the commercial reels date from the 60s to 80s (Jim Nabors vocalizing, anyone?) and many have had their high frequencies destroyed from being played with magnetized tape heads. New raw tape is expensive. The machines are mostly 30 years old AT LEAST and tend to be finicky and in need of regular service by too-few tape techs. If you still want to get into this "hair shirt" medium, don't say I didn't warn you :-)
So why do I love it? Because some of the tapes are simply stunning sonically. The sound of open reel tape in general is addictive (but stick to at least 7 1/2 IPS tape speed; slower-speed tape tends to really suck). And you can't beat the sight of those spinning reels.