Tested it yesterday. Amazingly smooth transport and a very smooth sound. It sounds nothing like transistors. I can't detect any edginess. There's a new crop of Sony metal tapes that Jeff from esl tested on this deck and excellent. $3 each. A couple of years back a metal cassete wiod cost maybe 30 times more on ebay. Apparently the only thing where cassette tapes surpassed rtr was on the formulations. Millions invested in r&d.
I'll try taping today.