With a JH24, prepare for professional help. Unless you have the services of a tech on a fairly regular basis, you're not going to be really happy with a 2" machine. Even my tech who specialized in MCI's spent LOTS of time under the hood trying to figure out why it wasn't working. Plus there's lots of parts that are extremely expensive (thank Sony for that) that are hard to find. Book some time in an analog studio on your next project and see how you like it. See if it's really worth it to you. There's so much "nostalgia" about analog tape these days and a lot of it is coming from people who have never even threaded a tape machine. There is definately something to the sound, but as a long time owner of 2" machines, I would not go back. Well, I might go back, but only if I had a pretty large commercial facility with a tech on staff that was good with those machines.
I take the strengths of digital and go with it - the weaknesses, I try to find ways around them and turn it into strengths. Many are all google eyed about analog tape, but they forget (or never knew) the bad things - dropout on tape, high end that starts to erase the next playback after recording, edge tracks, cross talk, nd on and on. Make sure that it's really what you want. While I often get nostalgic about the old days....I'm not looking back.
Now....don't try to take my analog console away though!!!
