As said (and we've tested this extensively) the deck doesn't have a great bearing on things.
The professional models (like the AG 7xxx series) do sound a tad better but they used balanced outputs and also the amplifier stages on them are more akin to HiFi reproduction than an afterthought.
But, we've had great success with even very modest machines, the late Awia machines as one example we found have great audio playback quality from HiFi tapes, similarly Samsung and Thomson machines we have found impressive.
There's very little actual variance, so I would buy on condition and price rather than go out looking for a certain model for just audio reproduction; obviously, it'll need to be a HiFi capable machine.
Something with a remote might be a touch more useful as you may need to knock the tracking around to try and get the best HiFi reproduction, the machines tend to go for the image first so something with clear manual tracking controls might be useful. That in mind, usually the Channel Up/Down keys are almost universal to override the tracking.
Good clean low mileage heads are more important here than the model.
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