Bah!
Bolting on budget tape kit to CD-equipped, er, equipment started the minute manufatcurers realized they needed to dump all their good but not stellar range of tape transport chasses.
I bought a boom box in 1984. It has servo-driven heads and track search built in, along with all tapes made compatibility and Dolby II noise reduction (which was standard buy then). Cost about $150 if I remember right.
Fast forward ten years and I get a similarly priced box from the same manufacturer featuring two tape decks (woo!) and a CD player. The tape decks feature metal/FeO2 compatibility but not the proper capability to deal with Super Avalyn type coatings. There is no Dolby noise reduction whatsoever. Head movement is by levers under the buttons. In short, old cheap tat.
I would like to add that while I had tape decks go belly up, they were universally the portable ones I strapped to my hip that got well bashed and smashed in a given day, and it was always the door latch that went, *not* the tape transport itself. All my non-portable cassette gear is as good as the day it was bought, practically. I tell a lie, I had a cheap in-car unit eat its own drive belt so I tossed it.
In the same time period I've gone through three mollycoddled CD players due to various failures, usually chip/CB related or read head servo failures that required no bashing or smashing at all.