I've always regretted selling my old reel to reels in the 80s, but, if I remove the nostalgia then I'm positive it was the best thing to do. I sort of look for good examples of what I had on ebay, but with the rose tinted spectacles off - spending probably £800 on a machine often labelled (for the sellers safety) spares or repair, is stupid. Leaving aside any of the cult or love aspects, buying a reel to reel will, not may, require you to get a bit dirty. Regular cleaning, adjustment, and belt replacement is like your car needing fuel filters, brake fluid and timing belts. If somebody has a reel to reel in working order, why is it for sale? If they were enthusiasts, they'd keep them for all the wonderful advantages, but the reality is they're a pain. Farview's advice is sensible. Pay somebody to do the transfer and walk away with files on a drive of some kind. Unless you want to really get into analogue, don't do it - it's a kind of good natured cult where everyone seeks the amazing, warm lovely audio they are capable of, but get the noisy, hissy, unreliable, wow and flutter infested recordings we all made, but now pretend we didn't. Getting to the end of a session without a problem was a real fist punch moment. Owning a reel to reel is a work of love and patience. It's not really about the music. When I first went to hard drive digital I copied everything to the drives of the day, and 44.1KHz, 16 bit .wav was as good as it got - and even on that first gen kit - was really good with all the dodgy tape problems missing. I know one day somebody will offer me a Ferrograph 722HD - my first proper reel to reel stereo machine and I know I will buy it. I also know that in my head, it's an awful lot better than it really could be in real (reel) life!