Top 10 vintage cassette decks

@jond 
The Dragon Slayer!! That’s the best ever. 

@spenav When I was first getting into audio the store local to me had one of those for sale, even back then it was out of my price range but I used to stop in just to ogle it.

The only cassettes I care about are those of my old bands either in performance or jamming, and me playing my musical instruments. No, we weren't very good, but it'd be great if I could hear how bad.

I having had Naka CR7E for home and TD700E for hi fi car for many years, the latter I sold last year with a new playhead spare.
Both had great sound better than all the home and car decks I’ve had.
However, there is a contender who aspires to leadership and has the name of Studer A721 or the brother for home use Revox B215S.
They will make the repairman happy in case of breakdown because the interior is in modules and is completely disassembled in less than 15 minutes for all maintenance unlike the Naka which have tangles of cables and curses to change the belts, idler or other.
Obviously the performance is state of the art.

another vote for Nakamichi Dragon.

I never owned one but a friend of a friend had one.  It's operation and performance seemed awesome compared to anything I had heard.  Other components in his system certainly contributed, but the Dragon, in my recollection, was the star.