Found another company advertising tape restoration on the Web.
http://www.soundsaver.com
I'm hoping this thread will be definitive and list enough companies to give people a choice, not to mention do-it-yourself alternatives.
While there are a few studios that do reel-to-reel transfers to digital, very few specialize in it. As to the quality of that specialization, there seems to be two important variables:
1) The type of tape recorder used for playback.
2) The type of A/D converters used between the tape recorder and the DAW.
I suppose a third variable would be the type of DAW used, which might be important on multi-track transfers. It might also be important to those who think one DAW sounds better than another.
So far, Sonicraft seems like the best for this type of thing to me. A 1/4-inch transfer would be done on a Studer to Mytek converters to Nuendo. Steve also gives free estimates, while Terra Nova Mastering in Austin charges $75 an hour for this with a 1/2 hour minimum charge.
Sonicraft, however, does have a $250 minimum. I really don't have enough reel-to-reel projects to take advantage of this, although that could change, since more tapes have been turning up as I search through storage.
Anyway, I've decided to do the baking and transfer myself. I bought a Snackmaster FD-60 for the baking ($50 at Target) and borrowed a friend's Otari MX5050. From the Otari, it'll go to an Apogee PSX100SE to Pro Tools. Since I'm NOT digitizing Pink Floyd or The Beatles, this should work out fine.
If I had more serious material, I think I'd want to know more about the playback quality of various tape machines. That would be a project in itself, and at some point, it would be wise to take the advice of someone who's already made those tests, such as Steve at Sonicraft or Jerry at Terra Nova.
But since I'm only going for better-than-the-cassette-version-I-made-from-the-reel-to-reel-master quality, the Otari to Apogee to Pro Tools chain should do just fine. If it turns out I don't like the do-it-yourself results, I can always have someone else do it later on down the road, since every source I can find tells me it's okay to bake tape more than once.
And there you have it.
Jasper