I've been buying vinyl for decades, but went near 100% digital from the late 1980's until about 2010. I have thousands of CDs and several thousand LP's. I continue to buy a mix new music and older stuff.
It has always been a mixed bag. When done right vinyl almost always sounds obviously better than digital.
There is wide variation of quality between pressers. I use the Discogs website to lookup both old and new pressings and can usually get either the name of the presser or some comments on the quality of a particular pressing. Very useful. There are some pressers that are so consistently bad that I'll skip buying their vinyl altogether when I see their name as I've been taught the hard way that nearly every issue they produce is crap. Others so consistently excellent that I buy without much of a care and am usually satisfied.
Some years back The Beatles released their black box complete album set. When I received my first copy, without doing any research I was very disappointed with the vinyl- constant noise, distortion, warps- pure sh!t. I went to Discogs and noted there were two additions pressed- US and EU. The US was pressed at Rainbo (renowned for consistently horrid quality products) and Optimal Media in Germany (renowned for their generally high quality). I contacted the label (not easy to do) and found a product manager. They sent me a new set right away-- still a US copy-- and still pure crap. I wrote them back and let them know. Next they sent out an EU copy. Vastly superior- a keeper.
When The Beatles issued their white box mono box set I noted that all editions were pressed at Optimal Media-- done to near perfection. No return necessary.
So these days, because we have the Internet, I believe it is essential, if you care about quality, to research the version you're going to buy so at least you'll have some sense of confidence (or not) of what you are LIKELY to get.
I also can tell you as a curator of vinyl that nearly everything needs to be pre-cleaned whether old or new. This is just part of the hobby if you really care about sound quality. Not all LP's can be improved by cleaning as most of you know, but many if not most can be. Many require multiple cleanings.
Overall I'd venture to say that vinyl quality is improving because there is a lot more competition entering the market and because vinyl, which used to be the only medium for purchase is now one of several options, and is marketed as the "premium" version of the product-- creating higher (justifiable so) expectations from many consumers.
For a time, some years back, when vinyl sales were skyrocketing and there were far too few pressers, labels (due to marketing/touring) considerations had little choice other than to book the job with whomever could get it done within their time-frame. This caused an avalanche of bad product to hit the market. This has slowly ameliorated as new plants have opened for business.
If you get a dud-- RETURN IT. This is how you "teach" companies to do a better job in the long run.
Vinyl is not for everybody. It is expensive, it is still hit and miss (although you will get better at avoiding the latter if you do a bit of research), and you absolutely need a good turntable, cartridge, and phono preamp (there are now MANY choices in all price ranges).
The reward for me is totally worth the time and money invested. Since being able to get virtually anything I want on vinyl again I hardly listen to CD's anymore, and instinctively grab the vinyl over the other choices.
A huge longterm difference is also listener fatigue (which I may be causing a bit of here with this long post). With vinyl I experience none at all and always want to hear more, with digital I have always found that I want to hear less.
For what it's worth...
