About the only domestic electronics that were affected by cold AFAIK were portable radios, carry about and especially car radios (which were outside all the time of course) .
The local oscillator necessary for a superhet receiver would fail to start at near 0C temperatures. I had an old Ford radio that would never work for an hour or so in the winter until the bulkhead space got warm enough.
It is possible I suppose that a tape machines bias osc' could fail to start at very low temps' but since most are "push pull" not likely.
Low temperatures have little effect upon thermal noise, at least at temperatures humans can endure! Dropping a 200Ohm R from 20C to 0C result in the noise going from -129.67dBu to -129.978dBu a massive noise reduction of 0.11dB!
In any event, the biggest noise bug for you analogue chaps is tape hiss and that is not temperature dependent!
I know only too well the cost of keeping warm but I would have thought quality of work would suffer along with the suffering?
Dave.