this guy seems to be the authoratitive source on the innerweb for old soundtracs stuff:
http://www.studiosys.demon.co.uk/mixing_consoles.htm
i have an MR and have been relatively happy with it, but haven't used enough fancy consoles to make a real qualititative comparison. is it inline or split? mine's split which is definitely the biggest drawback.
also see:
www.recordingconsoles.net
they've been reputed to have shoddy support, and hard to track down parts for (soundtracs as a whole for thier analog consoles) - i had to jump through a bunch of hoops to find someone to get parts from here in the US.
what else is in that price range, a soundcraft ghost? is it (the solo) modular? i was initially looking at the topaz and scrapped that idea since they weren't modular. also, a big drawback to mine is the entire master and group section is built on the same metal frame, so it's difficult to get at the guts for working on it.
hope that helps some - best of luck.
nick