Back in my audio CD ripping days there were certain make/model CD drives that had much lower initial error rates and fewer retries needed to capture the audio track error free. I kept a pair of these drives in a tower computer specifically for this reason. PATA interface drives, as I recall.

The software I used would report how many initial errors were encountered during a given CD rip and how many re-reads were performed. Often the initial error count was zero across the entire disc, which made for rather quick rips, allowing me to barely get out of my chair before being able to insert the next disc.

Of course, now I cannot recall which specific drive model those were. Plextor certainly rings a bell, but which specific model(s) escapes me.

Perhaps a search for a CD (not DVD) drive that has an excellent reputation for CD ripping may also do well at reading degraded CD-R discs. Then again, reading old CD-R discs probably has its own Internet interest groups.