> They are making new decks but since 2005 or so they all use the “tanashin mechanism” which is cheap and highly reliable (minimal moving parts!) but sounds awful.

IIRC, the last big customer for cassette tapes was prisoners in the prison system, so "new" tape players are universally garbage (because priority 1 is complying with prison regulations, priority 2 is being as cheap as possible, and priority 3 is having nice things in prison is a liability).