[Radio Wrangler]

One oddity regarding the simplicity versus complexity issue is that a 3-motor deck is a lot simpler than a 1-motor deck. It eliminates a lot of rubber wheels and belts which degrade and can be a pain to find replacements for. This is an area which gives the Revox a useful advantage. If you bought one nowadays, the only belt in the thing drives the tape counter. There are several capacitors best changed, and there are several trimmer pots which tend to fall apart. So, they're fixable without unobtainium, and take reels up to 10.5"

With any tape machine today, replacement heads aren't available, so their condition is important. The Sony TC377 has rather long-lasting ferrite heads which survive well, but are considered to be a bit limiting at high flux densities.

For multi-tracking, you're looking at those 4-channel TEACs, but they can have mechanical issues which can be difficult to fix.

There's also the 4-channel 'portastudio' cassette-based machine, but you lose the quality of the open reel machines.

David