I bought a yamaha 4 track when I was 19-20. That helped me a lot. Before that I used a simple cassette player with an intergraded mic. Just your basic cassette player that costs about 15$ US.

Now I use my computer to record licks and basic Idea and then work with them on my four track.

There are some virutal four track for the computer too.

DD clip was one but that's a couple years back so I don't know if they are still around.