Can we finally put Reel to Reel out of its misery? Put it to rest people.

Although you have to admit some of the machines are nearly "steampunk" in appearance!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Indeed uberwaltz.

I've seen a few fancy RTR that look kind of cool.

But the physical aspects of using RTR tape has always been a turn-off for me. 

I have been using reel to reel since this last december and have only managed to destroy one $8 tape (which I cannot find a duplicate of...ugh). But other than that i prefer it to handling vinyl. Everything seems to affect vinyl playback--everything.

To do it right, you have to manage static, dust, rumble, people walking, keep the needle clean, don't bump anything, be careful how you slide the vinyl in and out of its selves, carefully drop the stylus, properly apply the RIAA curve (via one of a million different ways to do a phono preamp), dampen platter resonance, maintain tracking height, tracking weight, tracking angle, anti-skate, choose what type of stylus you want, how do you know if you have damaged your stylus or if it's gotten old, deep clean your vinyl....

Tape has pretty much none of this.   All you've got to do is get it calibrated once a year by a pro (or learn to do it yourself), degauss the metal parts occasionally, clean the tape path with lint free swaps and alcohol, clean the pinch roller with some distilled water every week or so and adjust tape position in or out if you happen upon a warped reel.

Nothing is near invisible with a tape player. Much is near invisible with vinyl. 

Plus vinyl has an additional mastering phase and by the time it gets to your turntable it's already like 3 more generations away from the master tape than commercially released tape is.  

Tape path to your home:
Master tape>dupe master>tape you listen to at home

Vinyl path to your home:
Master tape>RIAA EQ applied and bass phase aligned and summed to center remix for cutting and then cut lacquer>mother>stamper(s)>record you listen to at home

Distilled water on the pinch roller without any alcohol? I doubt that would clean any residue off. 

There is one vintage recorder that no body mentioned; it was my favorite, I owned one that was as good if not better than my reel, and it was more convenient. The one I owned was hi-end and I don't even remember the name, but if I took the time to look through some old magazines I might find it.

Aside from professional quality open reel, a Hi-Fi VCR was the best audio recorder around. I still have VCR tapes that I recorded on this machine. It broke and couldn't be repaired, but I bought a Sony that's still working.

By request, if anyone is interested, I could do a review of the Sony, and try to find the brand of the Hi-Fi VCR that was so good.