My brother used to prefer listening to cassette recordings (on TDK SA) of his own vinyl than the vinyl itself - he preferred the sound!

This is exactly what I miss and therefore I play tapes to hear these sounds...
Also miss sounds of Reel-To-Reel and manual tape feeding. 

The other day came across this website: http://www.thevintageknob.org/index.html
some of you may be familiar with it, But I spent whole day at work going through the pages and reviewing images and specs of absolutely amazing machines.