Here's a question for everyone: when it comes to blues recordings from the 1930s and particularly the 1920s, do any of you compare different releases of the same recordings in order to determine which sounds more to your liking?
Some of the 78s from the 20s have an almost unforgivable amount of surface noise. I've noticed that there is a tendency for record companies to use a lot of noise reduction technology, generally too much imo.
The label that has become my go to for any and all blues records is Yazoo records. They started as one guy who transferred his own collection of 78s onto LPs, and now they transfer 78s to digital format for CD release. They always use noise reduction sparingly. There is still a lot of surface noise on many of the best records, some Charlie Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson tracks are especially bad, but you can hear the full sound of the guitar so much better.
For example, I pirated a Blind Willie Johnson collection released by Columbia, a major label, and it has so much noise reduction that you can barely hear the guitar. So I had to buy a Yazoo release, and the difference is night and day. I pirate music when I can, but when your looking for the Yazoo release of Skip James or whoever and no other label will suffice it can be difficult to find, and if I do find it they'll be nobody seeding, so I have to buy them but it's worth it.
Another good label is Document. They mostly concentrate on releases called The Complete Recordings of __________ in Chronological Order. They don't sound quite as good as the Yazoo releases, so I use them as a backup.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship to Paramount Records, the label that recorded some of these guys in the 20s. They released a lot of great music but they were known for using poor recording technology as well cheap material for the actual 78s. I read that some Charlie Patton 78s on Paramount were laid down on the same material used to make bowling balls. So any music by artists that were exclusively singed to Paramount sounds extra bad.