I try to open the window to let the air pass ...
The Analog Recording quality certainly determines the quality of the work but it is not enough, the way you work can have an equally important impact.
First of all there must be an awareness of what can be done and that cannot be done in the specific case. A sense of coherence and constructive balance between all the important elements is fundamental to avoid forcing and to find that sweet spot to interact with synergy: the acoustics, the noise, the closeness to the source, the stereo or surround techniques, the analog recording tools, the post-production tools, ....
These are just words but awareness is important and means: Never tell yourself, "I'll fix it later."
In reality there are many subjective aspects and the final work somehow expresses the author's aesthetic intentions.
Personally I am more interested in close sampling with just one microphone but even in this way there are many variables and choices to make. For example, an omnidirectional microphone (pressure) may not be ideal if the environment is noisy. Even positioned a few inches from the source it can capture a lot of dirt from the environment.
You can think of attenuating this dirt in post production with the current iZotope RX7 Spectral De-noise but you can also decide to use a directional microphone (pressure gradient) to focus on the source (and to control the proximity effect). Even in the analog domain you can think of using a transient shaping tool like Elysia nvelope to dry the sound out of the dirt by decreasing the "Sustain" control ...
In short, you can proceed in various ways based on your priorities.
To talk about some concrete examples, if you listen to 1928 MT. CARMEL E.M. SKINNER (DRY) you can understand that more than ten years ago the denoise processors were not as sophisticated as today and the sound quality is inevitably affected. I think that today's restoration could greatly improve the stop quality. Despite this, good results can be achieved especially when the stops are mixed together.