[OzarkTom]

You might be right, but pardon my scepticism.

Look at the Mercury Living recordings from the 1950's, still SOTA today.

[S Clark]

Look at the Mercury Living recordings from the 1950's, still SOTA today.

I have a scores and scores of early Mercury Living presence lp's- around a hundred or so with at least half in NM condition, and most early stampings.  My opinion of them is hands on, not something I read off the web... they are good, but over-rated.  They are nowhere near SOTA vinyl.  Even in their day, I think Decca/London was better, and RCA was usually better. 
All this being said, the basic equipment used for these evaluations are my ears... which are a long way from SOTA.

[bdp24]

While Mercury LP's have a great deal of "immediacy", they also can be rather brash sounding. Some less-collectable (HP and TAS made Mercury's as valuable as they now are) but equally good sounding LP's are the British Decca and E.M.I. albums, which are much smoother sounding, though without quite the "aliveness" of the Mercury's. In between are the American RCA's, also excellent.