Hi Fred,
I have only been in this game for about 2 years, but it's amazing how much you can learn. Sadly my mentor passed away a month ago, but I think of him every time I line up another tape on my machines.
Now I understand the basics, I can see why optimising everything is the key to getting the absolute best out of this great medium. I can't see how fancy replay electronics can come before understanding basics about how analogue tape works and how to line up your machine. Maybe it's just because people are frightened at the thought of adjusting everything on a pro studio machine. A nice glitzy consumer/prosumer machine looks manageable, just like a cassette deck. But of course, few cassette decks get the very best out of that medium, but some do, like the high end Naks, where you can adjust the azimuth and calibration.
The problem about many consumer decks is that access to calibration controls is sometimes difficult. Also, most consumer machines have only one "memory" setting i.e. the one you have just made with your tweaker. Hence, there may not be much appetite to learn as it's just too much fuss.
Using the Sony APR5003 has been a dream in terms of learning, as everything is software driven off the front panel. The huge printed manual is great; if you don't have it, you can download it from Richard Hess' APR website.
I haven't needed a huge amount of kit to get going - a test tape, calibrated test tones, an XLR-RCA balanced transformer and my TSL PPM unit with mono/sum function (or an oscilloscope if you just have standard PPMs without twin needles or mono/sum). Once you have learnt how to do it, it just becomes second nature. With the high cost of master tapes and new pancakes (I'm in your small elite sub-set here), it seems daft not to try and get the very best out of it. It's no different to guys spending ages on setting up a cartridge for vinyl replay.
Charlie