I recall you expressing your dissatisfaction with the rip of Mystery Of Bomarzo last year [...]
Hi nidostar! I think I know what happened, my bad. I compared the sound of the Etruria rip with itself, believing the comparison was with the other one. I briefly wondered whether the Bomarzo rip had really been this bad, but I was in a bit of a hurry. I did compare the correct spectrals, and this is how I ended up with the "mystery" of two different rips sounding equally distorted.
While the Bomarzo rip does not sound good it is nowhere near as bad as the Etruria rip. As you suggest, the latter was probably produced using a pick-up with a very dusty needle.
I assume that severe de-noising was applied to the Bomarzo rip, producing a flat, dense and grating sound. But it's not distorted in the way the other rip is.
So, everyone please ignore the Larson/VC-People stuff and just retain the Kümpel rip if you want it.
Cheerio!