Thanks for the very thorough advice, everyone, especially with the discussion of the medium's drawbacks. I don't intend for cassettes to replace CDs as my main medium of music, and I certainly don't expect to get the same reliable SQ that I would from digital mediums or from a good vinyl setup, but I do want a well-respected deck so that I can get the best I can out of the limited medium. I'm under no delusion that tapes will become a dominant part of the music industry again, but many of my favorite artists who typically release only on Bandcamp are also doing limited tape runs en lieu of a CD or vinyl release, since it's much cheaper for them to do so than to tie up their money for ten months waiting for vinyl to be pressed. A surprisingly large number of unsigned artists do small runs of relatively inexpensive tapes these days, and as a sucker for having a physical manifestation of my music, I prefer a CD, LP, or tape to a set of FLAC files. Most of those artists don't have access to world-class studios and probably originally record to MP3 because they don't know any better, so I don't think I would get that much benefit from something as highly regarded as the Dragon, but I'll look around for some solid mid-end gear from TEAC, Pioneer, Technics, and Nakamichi.
I agree with almost all of what you said. The only thing that surprises me is your comment about tapes being "relatively inexpensive". Today, producing small runs of audio CDs as CD-R's has gotten
VERY cheap. (You can make CDs one at a time, in about five minutes each, on any home computer, and the blanks cost about 25 cents each so, if you're willing to print your own labels, and stick them on yourself, you can do them for about $1 each; or you can have CDs commercially produced, with nice labels, jewel cases, and jewel case booklets, for a few dollars each in quantities as small as a few hundred, and the lead time isn't bad at all. As a specific example, one well known duplicator will print you 100 audio CDs, with jewel cases, labels, and inserts, on a one week turnaround, for $2.60 each. It's hard to imagine cassettes being much cheaper than that.)
Also, assuming that they are mastering their content digitally, even an individually copied CD-R will retain the full quality of the original, while a cheaply produced cassette is likely to have even poorer audio quality than one produced on high quality replicating equipment. (I'm inclined to believe that, today, issuing music on cassette would be more of a "philosophical retro statement" than a well thought out decision in economy.... and, given the choice, if they're offering both, I'd go for the CD for lots of reasons.)
Honestly, the only reason I can imagine for using cassettes is that either you already have a lot of cassettes with content that you like, or you have some ready source of content you like on cassette that isn't available in other formats.
