Tascam 122 MkII cassette deck

A coworker thinks I'm possibly nuts for considering spending several hundred dollars for a capstan motor for this. However my thought process is this:

- it's the deck a radio station or studio would have used back in the day if they used cassettes

- I might as well get it fixed now while there's still techs left that used to work on these when they were in daily professional use

- I predict these decks are going to become more expensive as time goes by.

I realize that many may think this post should be in an audio group but really my thought process is more aligned with BIFL. I know, someone's going to bring up a Nakamichi Dragon but I don't feel the need to pay 4x as much for a deck that *wasn't* professional grade back in the day and likely is going to need more repairs.

Thoughts? Can you consider audio gear BIFL? Or should we consider any media player an affectation and the only gear that really matters is preamps, amps, speakers/heaphones, and DACs because everything's going to be all digital anyway? My argument is it is not because I myself can give examples of music that I have on media that you cannot (legally) download for any price.

No pic because it's at the shop, but if you want to know what it looks like there's tons of them online.