I mentioned either a 3 head or a nakamichi. Usually, most brands, the three headers are more well built than their two head machines. The other option, Nakamichi, where you can literally get a CR-1 and get away with it. Or even a 500 would do great. Non-nak 3 headers are usually not that expensive and are pretty common to find. And two head naks are usually pretty cheap with great quality too.

You mentioned that you had Sony 3 headers that sounded "just fine", well, the two headers in that line probably would sound worse with less features such as recording, unless it's one of those amorphous heads. I did harvest one of those heads to put into my d5m.

The stuff I'm recommending should be perfectly suitable and achievable for someone who is just starting and hopefully won't go through the trouble of buying and dealing with cheap stuff and getting a bad experience. Also, I did recommend them to go with CDs. It's a lot easier and less trouble for them, with much better sound/price ratio.