lm741 which is most suitable

I have just connected the scope to the erase head and I get a sine wave at 48khz.
I just got a piece of recorded reel tape and tried moving it back and forth across the play heads whilst connected to the scope but got no waveform.
 
40kHz vs 48kHz bias makes no large difference. It has to be > twice audio band, yet low enough to pass stray reactances. ~~1MHz has been used on fancy audio.

Recording will work with no bias at all. Grossly distorted but recognizable.

It is hard to understand why touching the head wires does not make BIG buzz, yet sine injection gets sound.
 
turk182
The unit is partially working I can hear the incoming audio but the echo does nothing

To me, this is key and means that there is signal on the right hand of the two 10k pots. There is no signal on the left hand one, next to the foot switch on the schematic. Either all three heads are faulty or there’s a break in the circuit between the heads and the pot