Most PRACTICAL, yet good sounding REEL to REEL ???

04-28-07: Alaric
Tandberg. If you'd rather collect/make cassettes , Nakamichi.

At the store I worked at, we also carried Nakamichi. I did an A/B record/playback comparison of the Nakamichi 1000 ($1600 in late 1975) vs. the 3-head Tandberg 330 ($550, I think) cassette deck. In that experiment, the Tandberg sounded much more like an open reel deck. The Nak still sounded like a cassette--sort of thin and threadbare through the upper bass and midrange. I played the comparison for my co-workers for a sanity check, and they agreed. And yes, I did azimuth alignment on both decks before recording.

Johnnyb53 , try the Nak ZX9. It was essentially a Dragon with manual head adjustments for bias and azimuth. Astounding cassette deck. I fed mine CR tape and used a Tandberg amp/pre and a Yamaha PX-2. Got very nice results , IMO. :)

I have several Naks including the 480, 550, and 680ZX, which was the baby Dragon. I have also owned the 700 and 500. All in all Nak made some excellent decks in the day, right up to the very end. However, one of my favorites is the Tandberg A440 which easily held its own against the 680ZX. It may not have had the fancy features, but it certainly made excellent recordings and sounded great during playback.

i own 5 reel to reel tape recorders. why? i like to record vinyl and do alot of editing (choosing only the tracks i like). secondly, you can plug in microphones, even really cheap ones, and have an absolute blast recording music or even voices. my 1st machine was a concord, and the whole family gathered around and took turns reciting poetry or singing songs into the little microphone. we acted like idiots and had more fun than you can imagine. later i alligator-clipped wires to our blaupunkt am/fm/sw radio speaker and recorded classical and broadway shows.
these days you're better off with a hard-drive (alesis) recorder unless you can really play an instrument pretty well and have some decent mikes. if only more places would fix reel-recorders (and do it right) it would make me VERY happy indeed! as for old pre-recorded tapes, i just wouldn't want to take a chance with them shedding and possibly ruining a nice clean tape deck. but if you really want a tape deck in 2007, TEAC/TASCAM sells many of the (mechanical) parts you would need to get them to run like new again if they needed work. AND i strongly prefer decks WITHOUT AUTO REVERSE. pro-decks run in one direction and the reason is all too obvious. reliability, tape alignment, fewer heads/better quality.
of course, if by some miracle you find a nagra or stellavox in perfect shape that a neighbor will let you have for $500, you might want to make a quick run to the bank...!

Duh!

I just re-read your original post--your intention is to play pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes you find at garages sales, thrift stores, etc.

From that standpoint, the ultimate quality of the playback machine is a bit less important because you're interested in playback, not how they sound when playing back what they recorded.

I still rate Tandberg and Revox the best sonically; I rate Tandberg one-motor machines highly for reliability and (relatively) uncomplicated maintenance. Mechanically I always liked 3-motor Teacs, and for playing back pre-recorded tapes they should be fine.

If you find a Sony in good condition, those were good too. Hell, even those single-motor Sonys sounded good and were reliable. The Akais sounded good and were generally reliable, but harder to work on. I heard a professional engineer's portable Aiwa plugged into a mobile recording/playback signal chain that sounded incredible. Of course, he was playing back a master tape, but the Aiwa was up to the task.

You may want to google or scan about to see if anyone carries playback heads for any of these. If they got much use, they could well need a head replacement.