Reel to reel deck directly to power amp ?

Some recordings are quite bad so 7.5 ips two track will be enough.
Is there a tape considered best ? With cassettes it is Maxell Metal Vertex back coated.

Reel to reel deck is the ultimate audiophile device, and if you really want to be involved you got to have one. 

@kalali - 33 1/3 minutes. I actually always thought that was a bit amusing given that is the speed at which most LPs are played.

That's a very good question Inna, and I hope someone has an answer in regard to the best tape. I have been so glad to get Quantegy 456, that I haven't scrutinized it.

I dream of "Maxell EE"; that tape was so good that you could record at 3 3/4 and get the same results as recording on regular tape at 7 1/2.

would I be correct in thinking that these dbm values, as well as the ones you referred to, mean decibels above a milliwatt into 600 ohms?

Yes. However:

Generally speaking a problem is likeliest to arise in cases in which the amp is high powered (and most or all of its power capability is actually required by the user, at least occasionally), since there tends to be a **loose** correlation between the power capability of various amplifiers and the input voltages required to drive them to full power.

Usually higher powered amps have more gain. This is because they are often used on lower efficiency loudspeakers, and the gain is need both to make use of the preamp signal and also to make the voltage swing needed to drive the output devices. The result is that with a pro audio tape machine usually has more than enough drive to work in most situations.

Depending on the machine, if its output is not loaded at 600 ohms, it may well make more voltage. At any rate I've run tape machines directly into power amps many times with no worries. The exception as you correctly point out is that older consumer decks often do have lower outputs, the standard for many cassette machines was 1 volt. But I think we aren't talking about consumer machines here.

Next step could be asking Ralph to custom make playback head tube preamp or maybe playback head/phono stage unit, and match it precisely to his amps, and match the amps to speakers. Now that would be high end.

:)   We offer tape EQ in our MP-1 and MP-3 preamps and they work pretty well with our amps...