What is the best Reel To Reel machine ever built?


Everyone who has listened to master tapes or dubs knows about the well balanced sound they provide. But it is also important to have a fine tape recorder or playing machine to enjoy the tapes' qualities in a good system.
Maybe my question was raised once before but the relevance of the topic is now greater as the tapes are back to more and more audiophile friends, especially those who are owning excellent phono chains.

I have seen many big & professional machines being recently offered and sold on e-bay, Audiogon and other platforms and I am discussing within a small group which machine is really the "holy grail" among the R2Rs. So why not here. I am interested in findings.
thuchan

Thanks, Eckart!

I'll send you some images of the Esoteric P-0s manual...it's in Japanese :-)

-Sam
In my opinion it would be the ones that Professor Keith Johnson uses at Reference Recordings.
Joe Nies
Joenies,

Do you mean the big Nagra, the one Bottlehead is using too?

Best @ Fun Only
some impression from RMAF 2011:

Tape Decks
This was more than a bit surprising. I've always known that a good deck crushes the sound of vinyl providing you have source tapes that are fairly close to the masters. I was amazed to see so many top shelf decks in so many rooms at the show. Best part was, everybody was using them. I saw everything from studio decks to a little portable Stellavox 3 1/2" deck that will blow your mind. Good sounding open reel decks aren't exactly inexpensive, neither are the source tapes, but boy does it sound good. One of these days I'll get back into this. Like vinyl, I've kept all of my open reel tapes.