Not sure if I fit into your catagory of people who swear by them the Tandberg as X2000R states! I mean because I have a very fluid opinion of them. You see quite recently I bought a very nice Teac X-10r which is a 4 track reversible deck (rolls eyes) and yet after fitting brand new heads and pinch wheels it kinda blows the Tandberg away! Which surprised me a lot. The heads visibly on the Tandberg are not worn whatsover yet the sound quality is not as desirable as the Teac. I have to put this down to the pre-amp sections of the Teac which results in a more deeper and richer sound though you don't seem to loose the highs the overall sound is much more pleasing to the ears than the Tandberg and considering the bandwidth used is halved compared to the Tandberg this is quite astonishing. The Tandberg quality is extreemly good at 15 ips but has always been quite crap at 7.5 ips probably a bias issue more than anything else I assume, and this means gobbling up heaps amount of tape!!! Same can be said for the Teac though but considering it will cover twice as much recording with the quarter track it uses only eats away at half the tape consumption! and I can live with recordings made at 7.5 ips on that machine it serves me well.
As for the auto reverse on the Teac it is a gimick that shouldn't have even got out of the drawing room! To think of the extra expence in designing the project alone would be astronomical and the fact that you have six heads to wear out which are worn at the same rate as the tape always passes over both sets of heads no matter which set is being used beggars belief! and try setting the heads yourself is an extreemly time consuming enterprise. If I were you I would settle for the Teac A series but if you have a bit of extra cash I would reccomend the Teac B 32 or 34 in my eyes they look better and they do have better quality components than the A series and I prefer the tape transport as it does away with that spring loaded tape tensioner as apposed to the rollered tensioners of the later B series. You can get hub adapters for around 15 gb pounds and reels are not too hard to come by either. Have you considered the smaller reel tape decks i.e. Teac x3 or the likes I would imagine they might do you justice although inevitably you would loose some sound quality.
Hope this gives you a better idea of what you are actually going to get in the future and good luck.
Chris.
