Its funny, tapers spend a great deal of time optimizing their 'signal chain' as it were, but still
have little or no control of over half of the actual total signal chain...
Noisy Guitar pickup > crappy beer soaked cables> Buzzy tube amp > torn speaker driver>
banged up Shure SM58> crappy beersoaked cable> Snake> Behringer Mixer > Ground Loops, digital noise, SCR noise from lighting system> Power Amp> Ratty Speaker Cables> Poorly placed, under powered Pa cabinets> Air conditioners/fans> noisy audience> Then to taper's gear!
isn't that what makes this hobby so much fun and challenging though?
If the conditions were optimal, we'd be in a studio. and we wouldn't be tapers, we'd be engineers.
we would isolate instruments, use high quality mics on amps and use signal processing, and post production to put it all together and clean it up.
if you can make a good recording of noisy guitar pickup>beer soaked cables>etc... you're a good taper.