To make it worse, those remotes and many later ones had a set of buttons on the back with a secret door that was almost always removed.

Lots of instruments are harsh in a live situation, to put it mildly. Drums? Absolutely not something I like to be near, but they sound far different on recordings. Electric guitars can be piercing- it's usually referred to as 'ice pick in the ears'. Most likely to be a Telecaster through a Black or Silver face Fender amp or any single coil pickup through a badly set Tweed Fender amp- Rory Gallagher, Albert Collins and Buddy Guy are good examples.

I used to get a kick out of people whose answer to "What do you want the system to do" was "I want it to sound just like it did in the studio when they recorded it". Ugh. OTOH, JBL speakers were sold on the basis that they were studio monitors so,...... They were so disappointed to find out that their favorite recordings are just an illusion. When they tell me they want accuracy, I tell them "No, you don't" and then I explain about ear fatigue.