I had my eyes on this machine for well over six months. It was not too expensive and the heads seemed in excellent condition with a straight wear patterns barely 1.5mm wide. It looked whole although the seller did mention a few missing screws, courtesy of an absent-minded repair technician. Instead of proper rack ears, the machine featured a pair of hand-bended aluminum strips that looked decidedly out of place.
However, at the price it was a steal. This Revox C278 would make a nice companion to my C270.
An Excuse
My hesitancy on the C278 was rooted in the fact that I did not already possess a machine using 0.5” tape (necessitating its own alignment tapes, etc.) and already had two 24-track and one 16-track recorders.
Always looking for an excuse, I soon found one: that Revox C278 8-track would make an excellent machine for recording live performances of jazz ensembles direct-to-tape. At about 25kg in a fairly compact unit, the C278 is, in a way, portable.
Armed with this plausible excuse, I set off to Paris.
At any given time of the day, Paris is one sprawling traffic jam. While French drivers are courteous enough (seriously!), the real menace are the assorted scooters and motor cycles weaving between stuck cars at breakneck speed. The appear literally out of nowhere and just need a few centimeters clearance to keep their momentum.
This particular Revox C278 was owned by a French musician whose recording studio did not survive the Corona Pandemic. He had found no use for the recorder in his living room-based ‘studioette’ where a DAW took center stage.
This new ReelTape addition now awaits a few parts such as a replacement for the hardened pinch roller and, of course, proper rack ears. Cleaned and aligned, the machine will swing into action for direct-to-tape recordings this summer of 2026. I also have a lead on a Revox C-series autolocator which should possibly arrive sometime next month. The C278 will reside in the flight case that arrived last month from France with a Revox PR99mkIII. I’ll join it with the mono Revox PR99 monitor that also arrives next month from Italy with a PR99 mono version.
The Revox C278
The Revox C278 was the most expensive reel-to-reel recorder ever made by the company. Curiously enough the super low speed logging version was even more expensive than the high speed model. The former commanded a price of CHF 12,100 whilst the latter retailed at CHF 11,120 when it was launched in April of 1989 – a hefty sum at the time and almost three times the cost of a brand new Revox PR99mkIII.
The Revox C278 high speed version was produced for just about two years. A specialty product, only a few hundred of these machines were ever made: it is a rare beast – and the last reel recorder to leave the factory.
The Revox C-series comprised three recorders: the C270 2-track machine (essentially a slightly stripped down and rebadged Studer 807); the C274 4-track / 4-channel machine; and the 8-track / 8-channel C278 using 0.5” tape. The series is completed with the Revox C279 console.
Upon launch, the C278 was well-received by both professional studios and well-heeled home recordists. Its distortion and wow-and-flutter numbers were well into Studer territory. Frequency response and signal-to-noise ratios also impressed. The one criticism concerned the relative difficulty of servicing the C-series machines. They were easy enough to align properly but any fault in the transport logic would stump most old-school techs.
