How often do you have to service your Studer or Otari deck ? Home not pro environment.

Two things - hunting for master tape dubs and making compilations off records and even maybe some cds.

Restoring Revox A77's is expensive. I sent mine to the national service center in Nashville years ago, and the restoration cost me more than the A77. It's like servicing an old BMW; there comes a time when it no longer makes economic sense.

Buying from a reputable source can also be difficult or impossible.
That's what I thought, if I use the deck for, say, thousand hours a year, I would need to have it looked over every five years or so.
But, how long do the reproduction heads last, assuming best tape and head cleaning every ten hours ? I would also treat the head with LAST tape head preservative. I do it now with Nakamichi before playing each cassette and as my tech said there was only negligible wear. The deck has thousands of hours put on it by me and I didn't buy it new, though it was used very little before.

bdp24, audiophile endeavor makes no economic sense whatsoever. People wear out $10k cartridges and $500 NOS tubes.

There is another advantage, and it is a big one , to using open reel deck instead of turntable - you don't need active preamp, you run it directly to power amp. You record directly from phono and lose almost nothing. And of course you can run phono thru deck and listen to records using deck's preamp. With phono, I believe, you always need active preamp, you don't get full sound from vinyl without it.