I was a huge cassette buyer in the '80's and early '90's. My main deck was an Onkyo Integra TA-2070 which sounded quite good and recorded well. It was an expensive deck when new in '84. Bought a new 2 head Kenwood for $220 in 1989 (about all the money I had as a college kid) which still operates very well. Not a great deck as compared to all the others mentioned here, but has been a solid workhorse for mobile recording projects and general playback if needed these days.
Totally agree with @bkeske about the retail production tapes from the golden age of cassettes. Many of mine sounded very good.
I am a big car audio enthusiast as well and the cassette collection allowed playback at home and in the car. Remember when the HLTAC head on Alpines came out (vs. the previous SCC head)? I HAD to have a head unit with that tape head and spent $600 on an Alpine pre amp only pull out head unit in the mid '90's just to have increased SQ in the car...Getting off topic here (my apologies for bringing up car audio), but with A/D/S components and power, it was very high fidelity in the car.