Maybe it's just me but I'd avoid standalone cassette units like the plague.
They sound half decent and have devent features when used proberly, but they're nothing more than souped up 4 Track cassette decks.
(ie, rewinding, fastforwarding, splicing noises etc..etc....

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Hey Simon.... or any other tap/jazz/rock players.... we should have a friendly guitar contest. :D

We should write a song from scratch with a time limit of one day. The chords should be prearranged and set up so that it's simple enough to follow. Somebody else can write a 2 minute acoustic riff using simple open chords
Then each of us add drums, bass, guitar, keys and vocals to see who comes up with the best sounding tune, using your tabletop unit and my G3 Mac with the built in VST's.

No cheating etc.... and no inserting old studio tunes or whatever.
Just write something on the scratch with a time limit of 24 hours.)

The results can be posted here with a vote process.

The winner gets a free date with a hot potato