Open Reel Curious

Flee while you can! Run far, far away!

I have a lot of fun with my open reel Teac.  I bought the deck refurbished for $400 and it has worked error free for years. I scour local auction sites and ebay for factory pre-recorded tapes (mainly 60’s and 70’s rock) and have ended up with a few dozen to play. I do zero home recording. Yes, it is interactive in that you need to keep the tape heads clean, and the rollers clean, but otherwise it is no harder than putting on an LP.  
 

Occasionally there is some splicing involved but I’ve been fortunate in that most of the tapes I’ve bought haven’t really needed the musical sections spliced in any way but I have spliced leader onto the beginning of the tape.

The Good:

The sound is close to unbeatable with the right machine and tape

A good tape deck isn't really expensive

The Bad:

After hearing it returning to a lesser medium is difficult

A great tape deck is expensive

Great prerecorded tapes are expensive ($300 ++)

I decided to not have a tape deck because of the expense of the software.

Curious about where you live.  I am from Detroit originally and live in Chicago.

  In Bucktown there was a shop that had a R2R prominently displayed about a year go.  Ann Arbor had a very HE store that might be worth checking.  At the moment I can’t recall the name of either place, I’ll have to dig a bit

https://muse.audio A2

deciBEL in Chicago 

Here's a great source for refurbished vintage R2R's at reasonable rprices.

I have a Revox B77 they sold me.  Flawless.  I "borrow" records and CD's and record them.  

https://reeltoreeltech.com