Orpheus10,
I appreciate your gift, thank you, but unfortunately I'll have to decline.
As I said, I am not ready now for reel to reel project, and when I embark on any project I try to do it right. In this case this would involve going all over the deck, servicing and aligning it, in addition to fixing clutch and whatever else might be close to breaking.This would be quite expensive but worth it. Besides, I was thinking of highest performance, that's two track deck. And I would need at least twenty or so reels plus good balanced cable to get it going.
Perhaps, you could reconsider and have it fixed. You play tapes a lot. I just don't want to imagine it being thrown away. It's good machine, it doesn't deserve it.