I'm a little surprised that this question has hung around unanswered for so long, but anyway, here goes:
The playback electronics of the Otari are good, up to a point, but you can get far more musically satisfying results using external repro electronics. Bottlehead currently offers two products: the Eros kit (which I use at home) and the Tube Repro , a finished product (which I use at work.)
One has to bring the cables from the playback head out to the external repro electronics. The details have been covered in several threads both here on the Bottlehead forum and over on the Tape Project forum. It's not really a complicated modification.
You do lose the use of the meters on playback, but if that's important there's a workaround. It involves splitting the signal and bringing it back into the Otari and monitoring input. That is covered in the existing threads too.
So just use the search function, all the info you need is here.
Paul Stubblebine
Paul Stubblebine Mastering, San Francisco
The Tape Project, LLC
serious student of the audio arts
