With the advent of DVD's, VCR's have gone the way of the 8-track player. However, this means that cheap, used VCR's are plentiful. The best ones to use are the older ones with the tape counter on the front panel. Some older VCR's may have problems recording or playing back with the lack of a video signal, but I've never encountered this problem. If this is a problem, you can simply record a TV signal over the entire tape, then use it for recording audio.
Simply connect a patch cord from the external speaker or headphone jack of your receiver to the audio in jack of the VCR. You can use the standard cables with RCA plugs, but you'll need a 3.5mm or 1/4" phone adaptor to connect to the radio's jack. I also took the additional step of connecting a tape recorder to the VCR, with a cable going from the audio out jack of the VCR to the mic input of the tape recorder. If this is done, an attenuating patch cord will need to be used. These can be bought from radio shack, or you can make one by connecting a resistor in series with the audio cable. You might need to experiment with the resistor value, but a 100K or larger will probably work fine.
When I wanted to record audio to a cassette tape from the VCR tape, I either used the recorder mentioned above, or else I used the VCR in our living room which had audio connected to the stereo. It was an easy matter to play the VCR tape and record on the stereo.
Using a 160 VHS tape on SLP speed, I got 8 hours of record time, which was more than long enough for my usual listening sessions.