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

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.

bdp24, I see, I misunderstood you. No, no intention to buy junk and make it perfect.
Those decks’ preamp section is quite good but of course this step can be improved considerably. However, I would very rarely if ever play vinyl except when making a recording, so this is non-issue.
Potential problem might arise when recording. I remember a thread where Ralph of Atma-Sphere said that there might not be enough gain from the phono to record directly and that one might need an active preamp between phono and deck. Pro decks were not quite meant for recording off vinyl unlike consumer decks. Impedance mismatch can also be an issue making it even worse. Well then, if needed I would have to get an active preamp. Tape projects are expensive and that’s the only reason why I postponed it.
He himself plays Studer directly to his power amps, here he did not anticipate any complications with either Studer or Otari.
Often I don’t listen to entire record or even one side and compilations make perfect sense to me. Downside is that when you upgrade your analog front end or even a cable you have to record again to have the best sound. No problem, I can do it every five years or so.
A few days ago I was offered a perfect example of Studer A810 by an esteemed audiophile. I didn’t even ask about the price, can’t do it now.