Walter Stutz spent more than a decade assembling what Revox describes as the world’s largest collection of Studer and Revox equipment. A new charitable foundation will make sure it remains intact and accessible to the public.
There are worse ways to spend retirement than collecting 800 pieces of Studer and Revox equipment.
Golf is one of them.
After 46 years with Swiss Post, Walter Stutz began assembling a private collection of Studer and Revox components that started inside his apartment and eventually grew large enough to require dedicated premises. More than a decade later, the collection has become an unusually complete physical record of two companies that helped define professional recording, broadcasting, and home audio during the second half of the 20th century.
Revox has now established the Revox World Foundation, a charitable organization created to preserve, expand, and publicly exhibit that collection rather than allowing it to be divided among private buyers, storage facilities, and eBay listings featuring the phrase “powers on, unable to test.”
The foundation was formally established through a notarized deed in June 2026 and announced by Revox on July 23. Its stated purpose is to acquire, collect, maintain, and exhibit mechanical music playback equipment, with a particular focus on Revox products, inside a publicly accessible museum in the Zurich area.
From One Apartment to 800 Components
Stutz’s former private Studer Revox Museum collection has now been transferred in its entirety to the Revox World Foundation.
The archive includes approximately 800 Studer and Revox components, along with company documents, files, photographs, measuring instruments, prototypes, and other historical material. Revox describes it as the largest existing collection of products from the two brands.
That distinction matters because this is not simply a wall of attractive reel to reel decks with wooden side panels and illuminated VU meters.
The collection traces the development of Willi Studer’s work from early radios through professional tape machines, consumer audio components, test equipment, prototypes, and modern Revox systems. It includes machines used in recording studios and broadcasting facilities, along with the domestic models that allowed consumers to bring some of the same engineering into their homes.
Studer equipment became part of the infrastructure of professional recording. Its machines were used by broadcasters and recording studios around the world, while products including the Studer C37 and J37 became closely associated with Abbey Road Studios and some of the most important recordings of the 1960s. Revox offered related technology to home users through components including the A77, B77, PR99, and its broader range of amplifiers, tuners, cassette decks, CD players, and loudspeakers.
These were not decorative lifestyle products designed to look convincing beside a bowl of wooden beads.
They were durable pieces of audio engineering built when a manufacturer expected trained technicians to repair a component rather than recommend downloading the latest firmware and hoping everyone forgot about the problem.
Revox World
The collection is exhibited at Revox World in Dietikon, near Zurich, where more than 1,000 square meters are dedicated to over 75 years of Studer and Revox history.
The exhibition covers products from 1948 through the present, including early tape recorders, professional studio and broadcast equipment, turntables, speakers, and current Revox systems. Most importantly, many of the classic components remain operational and are demonstrated for visitors rather than being left behind glass like evidence from a particularly expensive crime scene.
That functional aspect separates Revox World from many corporate archives.
A reel to reel deck makes considerably more sense when the reels are moving, the meters are dancing, and music is coming through a pair of loudspeakers. Looking at one with the power disconnected is like visiting a Ferrari museum where every car has been placed on concrete blocks.
Revox World is temporarily closed because of building renovations that began on May 25, 2026. Revox expects the exhibition to remain closed until approximately the end of November.
Reel to Reel Is Relevant Again
The timing of the foundation is also significant because reel to reel recording and playback are experiencing renewed interest within the high-end audio market.
Nobody is suggesting that prerecorded tape will displace vinyl, CDs, or streaming. New machines and master tape copies are expensive, the software catalog remains small, and threading tape at 1 a.m. requires more coordination than asking Spotify to play something depressing.
But the category is active again.
Revox introduced the newly manufactured B77 MK III in October 2024 alongside its own Analog Master Tapes collection. The current machine is built at the Revox factory in Villingen, Germany, with revised electronics, new tape heads, a digital counter, support for common tape standards, and the company’s traditional three motor transport design. It currently sells in Europe for €16,995.
Ballfinger currently offers multiple newly manufactured open reel machines, while other specialist manufacturers and tape labels continue to support the format with new hardware and premium recordings. This remains a very small and very expensive corner of the audio market, but it is no longer populated exclusively by people rebuilding machines manufactured when Gerald Ford was president.
The resurgence also makes collections like Stutz’s more valuable.
Modern reel to reel machines did not emerge from nowhere. Their transports, tape paths, motors, heads, equalization standards, and recording electronics were developed over decades by companies including Studer and Revox. Preserving that history provides context for the new machines and ensures that future engineers, collectors, and listeners can examine the original equipment rather than learning everything from scanned service manuals and grainy YouTube videos.
The Bottom Line
The creation of the Revox World Foundation is important because significant audio collections have a habit of disappearing when their original owners can no longer maintain them.
Walter Stutz spent more than a decade gathering approximately 800 pieces of Studer and Revox history, along with the documents, prototypes, photographs, and measuring equipment that explain how those products were developed and used.
Keeping that collection together, operational, and accessible to the public is far more valuable than allowing it to be scattered across private listening rooms where someone will eventually place a succulent on top of a Studer tape machine.
With interest in reel to reel growing again, Revox World is not merely preserving the past.
It is showing the current analog revival where much of its engineering came from
For more information: revox.com
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ORT
July 29, 2026 at 12:53 pm
“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
Long have I held my (albeit,in R2R hiatus) for the return of the King.
“For surely, Now is the winter of our disc content
Made glorious sound by this son of Studer”
I could go on paraphrasing the greats of this word but suffice it to say that the origin of digital is in deed rooted deep in analg for as it was said by “King Lear” – “Nothing can come of nothing.”
For to paraphrase the great Henry Ford, “I will build a Reel to Reel for the working masses and not just the asses… so affordable in price that no man making a good living will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his beloved family the blessing of hours of audio pleasure.”
Revox and others, are you reading this? You should be. Nostalgia sells but only sells well when it can be desired and accessed by anyone. If you appeal to the common man you will have tapped a well so deep that it reaches into the soul. Anything that does that, is far from common. Exempli gratia? I own and use a Crosley suitcase record player. It is FUN and ENGAGING. Soon I will entrust it to my granddaughter and so it goes and so it grows…
ORT