Hey Russ,
Glad to know your journey and that you are moving forward!
You may actually enjoy MONO recordings, I do...
"Harrison recalled in The Beatles Anthology, “When they invented stereo I remember thinking ‘Why? What do you want two speakers for? Because it ruined the sound from our point of view”. “We had everything coming out of one speaker,” the guitarist continued, “Now it had to come out of two speakers – it sounded pretty naked”.