If you can take the time to shop carefully, and, admittedly, have a bit of luck too, then you can find
a Revox A77 in very good to excellent condition for very little. I got a very good high-speed, half-track A77 for under $100 including shipping. The Revox won't limit you to 7" reels, and if you plan on running at 15ips, that can be a big benefit. They are built like tanks, very precise tanks. Documentation is pretty widely available, very thorough, and pretty inexpensive. They have a well deserved reputation for legendary reliability. Their performance and specifications are excellent, even by modern standards. Disadvantage: parts are expensive, although worth it. Also, the transport is controlled via relays. Yep, relays, not logic control circuits. Thus, you don't go directly from FF to play unless you want to clean up the mess and lose the tape it will spew out. Anyway, any engineer worth his salt knows how to "rock the tape" on these older machines.
What you will wind up with is basically a "baby Studer," and you can't go wrong with that. Note that
the B77 series has essentially the same specs, but tends to cost a lot more. I guess some folks just have to have the logic controlled transport and are willing to pay more to get it. The B77 is not as reliable as the A77, though.
You can get the same improvement as having the built-in Dolby noise reduction just by using a modern tape, like 3M 996 (my favorite), or GP-9, Emtec 900, etc. Note also that the A77s with the built-in Dolby tend to sell for considerably higher prices, so the best buy would be a HS/2 track unit and use +9 type tape.
