Quite possibly the wisest post I've read in quite a while, Peter
We're completely at the mercy of the producer/engineers/technicians in the studio, the mastering facility and the pressing plant ... any one of those guys has an off-day and things go down-hill rapidly. I mean, what are the chances that some vibrations in the air, captured fifty years ago in California, can be accurately reproduced in my living room today? Considering the intervening electronic and mechanical transducers, not to mention the ears and biases of the operators, it's a miracle we
ever get anything approaching decent fidelity from vinyl.
I reckon it's pretty much pot-luck whether a recording or pressing gets it spot-on. IME, buying vinyl is basically gambling ... you can slightly improve the odds by diligent research, maybe. Re-issues can be improvements, but probably half of them ain't imo, especially some of the 're-mastered' ones. I suspect that the knowledge needed to produce top-quality vinyl left the industry decades ago, the guys who really knew what they were doing. In my case, I buy re-issues if they are my only viable choice, or if they are 45rpm LPs (which I find really does make a difference). Otherwise, I actually quite enjoy/prefer the 'hunt' for good, used ones.