and 15 ips for analog fidelity that's hard to match. More power to you, but most of us have move beyond, sad to day.

I still have it. Hard to find 15 ips but the 7" reels of commercial music at 7.5 ips are around. I still have about 30 reels, and a Pioneer RT-707 deck, and it is great. With that deck and some others you don't flip the reels, you play the second half in reverse direction and the deck picks the other pair of heads. So you are not alone; I'm still a fan. Biggest surprise is that the tapes still work and sound good; no pile of iron oxide in the box. There are people with the large format reels with the NAB hubs, 15 ips decks, and even some new releases in that format, but I'm more in to keeping what I already had, albeit with newer pre-amp and amp. The key to R2R decks is to use them, keep them at room conditions, and then all the rubber parts like pulleys, wheels and belts may live on.