I have a lot of fun with my open reel Teac. I bought the deck refurbished for $400 and it has worked error free for years. I scour local auction sites and ebay for factory pre-recorded tapes (mainly 60’s and 70’s rock) and have ended up with a few dozen to play. I do zero home recording. Yes, it is interactive in that you need to keep the tape heads clean, and the rollers clean, but otherwise it is no harder than putting on an LP.
Occasionally there is some splicing involved but I’ve been fortunate in that most of the tapes I’ve bought haven’t really needed the musical sections spliced in any way but I have spliced leader onto the beginning of the tape.