I'm with you on this, Diki. As youngsters in the UK we could always tell a European record by the veil of reverb draped over everything - most unnatural. The odd thing was though, that when the Beeb recorded their 'live' bands for shows like Jimmy Young and Terry Wogan, draping reverb was standard practice. So it was backing tracks, lead vocal track, and harmony vocal track. Get that all down, five songs between 7 a.m. and noon with a tea break at 10:), then a wash with reverb, and it was done.

Doing session work around London in the sixties, bass was almost always recorded dry. With drums, producers usually wanted the snare heads tuned so loose they were almost like the skin of a rice pudding, a tuning no drummer would dream of on a live gig.