I actually started stereo recording in the mid to late 70's making recordings on a Revox A77 machine.  Before that I was playing around with a Phillips reel to reel machine in the 60's.  It had a sound on sound feature and two speeds and allowed some tricky things to be done.  It allowed you to transfer from one track down to the other and add in an input signal. I was over the moon at this. 
 
In the 80's I was not a fan of all the cassette stuff around at the time. I wanted to bypass it and I jumped into 4 track reel to reel in 1980 but at high speed using the finest tape and with noise reduction systems being applied.  Dolby C, and it changed the signal to noise ratio from something like -55 dB to -85 dB!  (Silent!) I was mastering onto a high speed half track Revox B77 as well.  (not with noise reduction, it is so good it does not need it!) It sounded splendid and still does. 
 
I came up with a system of creating 9 tracks of music all in stereo.  I found I could start with 4 track stems being punched in all too. Become excellent punch in person.  Mixed the four tracks to stereo adding in stereo fx and a 5th part musically live.  Mixed over to the two track.  Then spooling the 4 track tape to new tape and transferring the stereo half track across to tracks 1 and 2 of the 4 track.  Adding in 6th part in real time in stereo.  Then added in tracks 3 and 4 punching in etc and that ended up being parts 7 and 8 musically.  Then mixed the whole thing down to stereo again adding in 9th music part. 
 
From only bouncing over to the two track once and back I was able to build up 9 tracks of stereo heaven with no hiss anywhere to be heard.  Very high quality mix.  Had to learn the art of mixing the pre stems in advance though.  e.g. if drums came early I had to work on keeping them sounding crisp and stellar.  I was into stereo and wanted to keep it all the way. I use pre and post EQ with the stereo mix transfers etc..
 
Plenty of examples of it here on my Soundcloud.  Most of these tracks were done that way:
 
https://soundcloud.com/jeff-evans
 
I then moved into 8 tracks on half inch all with noise reduction.  Track 8 was striped with timecode and that was read and locked up an Atari 1040ST with the Steinberg Midex expander on the side.  That ran an 80 channel midi system! All from Cubase 3 on the Atari.  The other 7 tracks on the 8 track handled vocals, solos, all the live stuff.  This worked for me from 1983 till 1998.  Then I built my first computer system.  I had 64 or more synths all playing back live from Cubase into a giant mixing system for the synths.  The 7 audio tracks had their own quality Yamaha recording mixer setup with effects etc.. All in all a pretty decent way to go.  All being mixed to the half track reel to reel which soon translated into DAT and then hard disc.

Mid 70s stereo R-R Teac.  Nothing I would consider serious use.

LLyons
 
I do not miss the tape years - one bit.  

Amen.

LLyons
 
I do not miss the tape years - one bit.  

When I was recording to 2" tape, i had an engineer to do the dirty work.  I was only a musician.
Had I been the one actually working with the stuff, I'm sure i'd feel the same way you do.
 
I love digital recording for the editing ability, but miss having to play full songs.  This new process of recording in segments seems to take away some of the feeling of accomplishment I used to get.  Or maybe I'm just old and jaded...

I started with a Fostex X-15 and a Roland 505. Upgraded to a Tascam 8 track cassette with track 8 synced to Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 to a Tascam DA-20 DAT. Had a bunch of hard disk recorders after that and now I'm pretty much in the box with Splat, except for the occasional live location recordings with a Zoom R-16 which I transfer to Splat. It's been quite the journey!

Yes, two track reel to reel then 4 track cassette.

craigb
Hi Maurice!  Good to see you back in the Coffee House!  (Are you taking good care of "my" guitar?  )
 
4-Track Tascam in mid-80's for me as well.
 
Hmm...  I wonder what happened to all that stuff???
 

The Gaudy Paul?   She is great.  Just went to my tech for an annual set up.  Humidity and heat in Houston can make the neck shift enough over a year or two that the intonation goes out.  But she is up and crankin!  
 
She has a Gaudy sister now too.  

 

My first demo was on a Tascam 8 tracks cassette recorder. Drums were a Roland drum machine linked to one track. It was timing so the drum machine started the next beat on the right program.