[Mark J]

Technics look great
Tandberg sound great
Bot somewhat handicapped with limited parts availability

Crown sounds exceptional after Chuck Ziska works his magic on them. He took over from John Haines when he retired. Chuck has the parts stock and knows the machines inside and out. These machines are built missionary tough, belt changes can be done in the field, head blocks and electronics can be removed and sent together to be set up by a professional without having to send the transports. The SX, lesser electronics section and the 700 transport, again lesser, sound the same as the CX electronics and 800 transport. The SX is hard-wired vs. plug-in cards, even one for phono amp on the CX electronics. The 800 has some electronic controls vs manual push buttons on the SX. But since they sound the same and perform just about the same I'm with Vintage Pete saying that the Crown machines are a great vintage machine. A nice CX-822 can be set up with an amplifier to be a complete stereo system ready for the addition of speakers, tuner or other line sources and a turntable.

The Studer/Revox machines after the A77 (it is needing a full rebuild now and that gets costly so some techs don't work on them any more because people want a problem fixed not a rebuild and the tech can't do that because there is another problem right around the corner) are very good machines and have some parts support. I would think something like the A700 or some Studer would be something to consider along with a Crown SX/CX-822, you want the -22, a half track machine, they sound better than the -24 quarter track machines. But they burn tape twice as fast.