I have had my AKAI since 1979. I keep it clean, demagnetized,and make a point of regularly powering it on and it still works great, really great. It's the tapes that I've found are the larger concern even with the best. Proper storage helps but not always.
I bought a new TASCAM CC222MXII unit last year with CD and cassette tape recording and am quite happy with it. I mix my music (via a separate mixer) with prerecorded media and record CDs and tapes. Plus I have a lot of cassette tapes so having a deck is important to me. The TASCAM enables me to easily transfer the cassette recording onto the less delicate CD format.
I bought a new TASCAM CC222MXII unit last year with CD and cassette tape recording and am quite happy with it. I mix my music (via a separate mixer) with prerecorded media and record CDs and tapes. Plus I have a lot of cassette tapes so having a deck is important to me. The TASCAM enables me to easily transfer the cassette recording onto the less delicate CD format.