In my opinion, It is quite impossible to understand the right combo with guit+amp or mic+pre+comp+etc etc only listening a record, because there are a lot of manufacturers and a lot of user and "abuser" techniques.
Maybe an old record is more simple to understand the combo because there were less manufacturers and, I guess, the engineer technics were more similar one to each other than now.

Female vocals from U87s usually sound to me like someone's processed all the top end through a frying pan full of bacon.