Best cassette deck for transferring to cdr?

I'd definately go with a Nak. If price is not an issue, get a Dragon. If price is an issue, get a BX-300.

Keep in mind that either will probably need to be serviced, cleaned, demagnetized, aligned, etc. before being up to the task.

i wonder why nak's are thought to be significantly better than other cassette decks. i have a harmon kardon 492 with fine-bias controls and an actual freq.response graph that came in the box- a/b tests are very close to the cd, although the soundstage is mostly gone, but the music is 95% intact. i also have a tascam 122 which has to be hand-biased for each type of tape you use, an autolocator, bal and unbal i/o's etc. bought it as a refurb. from musician's friend. they went pretty quick (about $600!). nak's have azimuth adjustments, which are nice, no question, but other than that, i would want a pro-audio person to show me test bench results as well as explain where the electronics are a higher grade than the competition as well. i'm a bit biased, since i had a very nice nak in my car but it had to be fixed after only 2 yrs (they gave me a refurb to replace it, but it was BROKEN, not just a part or two)

3 head nak

Nakamichi CR-7A. The Dragon is the top of the line and the CR-7A is the next one "down" however>> there are those (like myself :~) who prefer the CR-7A over the Dragon because the Dragon plays in both directions, which I feel can present head alignment problems due to additional mechanics.

What mainly sets Naks apart, across all models I'm pretty sure, is that their record and playback heads have the narrowest magnetic gap(s) in the business (best high frequency response.)

As for your particular requirements: the better Naks (i.e. Dragon and CR-7A for sure, and maybe a couple other models) have electronic head-azimuth adjustment on-the-fly. This allows you to adjust the playback head azimuth to match that of the machine on which the tape was recorded thus optimizing the playback response -- a huge advantage when (I presume) you'll be transferring tapes recorded on a variety of machines.

I owned a Naka Dragon.
It was the best sounding cassette deck I ever used, it was very close to my Revox PR 99 Mk III.
Really good. Sad to see these things go replaced from inferior but modern designs.