what do you think off the older Revox equip. thank

excellent tuners & r-to-r, dunno about the rest of the line...

doug s.

As far as I've experienced, they did everything well. Excellent tape decks (based on their reel to reel technology), excellent tuners, great CD players (that still sound good...even if they are 12-15 years old), and good amps and integrated amps too (fairly detailed, but still warm and musical for SS). Some of their silver pieces look a little cheesy (in that European way) and dated, but that's their only real flaw that I can see. I own a B226, B250, B260, and B215...all in the black and gold signature series, and they look and sound very nice. At used prices, they make for a pretty nice first or second system (depending on your budget). They still have authorized service centers too, so that's a bonus. I'm using an old Studer A727 CD player as my transport and I prefer it to the original Rega Planet, a Pioneer DV-05, a Denon DCD-2560, etc. I bought it for $250 about five years ago, but I'm sure it must have been $3000-$4000 new...back in the late 80s.

while never thought of as being "audiophile quality", one might be surprised by their linear tracking TT's. You remember them, they had that "brick" of a tonearm that swung across the record and the cartridge was mechanically driven by a "belt" across the grooves. For a direct drive table, a motorized arm and not costing an arm and a leg, these things can sound pretty decent. Be forewarned though, they are somewhat hard to maintain once something starts to go wrong and it will only get costlier as time goes on. If you can find one for a "song" on Ebay, give it a shot.

The B-790 is the one that i'm familiar with. I picked one up for $150 in decent shape. Upon putting it into a system quite a while ago, the first words out of my girlfriends mouth were "i don't remember records ever sounding that good". Then again, she had never really heard vinyl on anything but a 'mid-fi" ( at the very best ) system in her life. When my brother came over the next day and i put on a record for him, the first words out of his mouth were "i don't remember records ever sounding that good or that quiet". Both admitted that they wouldn't have believed it if they didn't hear it for themselves. Seems to be a common denominator between the two of them for hearing "flawed vinyl" on such a "cheap" table : ) Sean
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