Those reel decks are fun to play with (recording and playing back some favorites), and nice to have around if you encounter a pre-recorded reel of an album you can find no other way. Thing is, all those mass duplicated reels have a weak high frequency response and sound good at best--a clean record will trump it every time. (That is typical of all high-speed mass-duplicated tapes, and the practice carried over to 8-tracks and cassettes as well.) To bring this full circle, I once bought a reel of Whipped Cream and the tape was so brittle, the beginning snapped off with barely any pressure on the tape.