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They are beautiful in a post-Mr. Edison's lab sort of way. And they work great. I was around them all the time when producing TV commercials in the 80s, and always found them fascinating. Sadly, as cool as they are, as great a wonder of mid 20th century technology as they are, you can get better recordings with Garage Band on a Mac, or whatever is its equivalent is on a PC.
About 10 or 15 years ago the institute where I worked at the time chucked a handful of those in a skip along with some Revox tape machines. Nobody had had a use for them for decades, they needed time and money to maintain and the room in the stores could be put to better use. They kept one or two just in case someone turned up with an old tape but as a tool to do a job stuff like that has almost no value. Different worlds.