Revox B251
A Swiss integrated amplifier that owners and reviewers treated as the command center of a complete Revox system — and one that still shows up in studio sell-off lists decades later.
Overview
The B251 turns up in the strangest places. Flip through a 1992 studio liquidation notice in Studio Sound and there it sits between Ikegami cameras and Neumann microphones — "Revox B251 amplifiers and B760 Digital synth F.M. tuner," listed as broadcast-grade gear being cleared out alongside the video switchers. That's the company the B251 keeps. It was never a novelty integrated amp; it was the hub of a Revox stack, and the people who bought it treated it as infrastructure.
Owners report that the real story with the B251 is system integration, not raw wattage. The period press made the same point. HiFi-Stereo (May 1984, p.40) described the front panel's rotary switching and its linked functions — including an infrasonic filter that could be tied to program-source selection so it engaged automatically with the right input, and tone-control buttons that also dropped level by 20 dB, each with a center LED to show when it was active. That's the B251's personality in one detail: it assumes you're running a whole rack of Revox sources and want the amp to keep up.
The remote story seals it. HiFi-Stereo (May 1984, p.40) noted that the B251's hand-held remote didn't just duplicate the amp's own functions — it could command an entire Revox system, turntable, tuner, and tape decks included. Audio (April 1986, p.52) confirmed the same remote ecosystem from the other direction, noting that Revox's B201 wireless remote was built to work with the B251 amplifier alongside the B261 tuner, B710 Mk II cassette deck, and the B791 and B795 turntables. If you were building a Revox system in the mid-Eighties, the B251 was the piece the remote was designed around.
Collectors note that the B251's period reputation has aged into something close to a cult following among Revox system builders — the amp you buy because you already have the tuner and the deck and want one remote to rule them. Used examples surface in dealer listings rather than as standalone hero pieces; a 1989 Audio classified (July 1989, p.?) advertised a B251 integrated amp at $700, which tells you the secondhand market had already settled into "serious but not silly money" territory within a few years of launch.
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