I'm not entirely sure that I'd never play that sound effects tape.
Also, been playing around a bit more and learning some lessons.
Lesson 1 - With used reels you never know what exactly is on the reel. Box was a Maxell UD 35-50, and the 7" plastic reel had Maxell etched into it. Yet, it played long enough (90 minutes on 3.75 ips) that I'm pretty sure it is 1800 ft as opposed to the 1200 ft shown on the box. Makes me hesitant to make any judgements about what the tape is like as I really have no idea what tape is actually spooled on there. Only cost a couple bucks so not a big deal or anything, but this makes me think being cautious with used tapes and not paying a ton for something on a reel that you really can't absolutely identify anyway is probably good policy. The tape sounds good, not really complaining about that. But, had I paid some of the high prices on Ebay for a specific tape and then the spool arrived with something else on it?
Lesson 2 - Speed matters. Now, with this mystery tape I got quite nice sound recording at 3.75 ips. However, turning the speed up to 7.5 ips EVERYTHING improved. Lower noise, deeper more detailed bass; every aspect was at least slightly better. Now, will I always record at the higher speeds? Nope. I will absolutely use the lower speed settings to make some long running tapes for background music and party mixes I don't have to change after having a few. The lower speed can still make some nice recordings that in many aspects surpass cassettes that I listen to happily anyway so I'm quite happy to play lower speed tapes on this thing. But, when top quality is wanted, cranking the speed reaps rewards. I think the reduction in noise was the most surprising aspect of this to me.
I'm still trying to settle on exactly what levels I want to use to record, but I can see that reel tape seems to be able to hold a pretty strong signal. Not sure if I get any sound improvement or not recording slightly higher than I would instinctively go for. By instinct, I would just lean toward keeping the VU meters out of the red for all but the biggest peaks, which on my deck means below 0. I feel like I can go a bit higher than that without distorting noticeably, but not sure if there is a good reason why I should. The lack of dolby does mean that I can get a more silent recording on cassette. However, that's the only thing that cassette wins. The fullness of sound, coupled with great, smooth detail on this reel machine beats cassettes across the board from my initial assessments. I may be getting hooked.
As someone new to tape, any lessons those of you who've been at this a while have learned would be nice to hear as well. And feel free to point out anything I say that seems amiss.