Hi hdoran- I don't have anything to contribute except to say I've heard (what I thot were) really nice live recordings made from an old Marantz Field Recorder, onto cassette tape, with a total of two knobs ... and I've heard recordings that were multi-tracked / layered / mixed / eq'd / etc. etc. that were kind of painful to listen to. Lucky for you there are a ton of resources out there on this subject.

Any way you could put your results up here? I'd be interested in hearing the difference between your all-in/one take recording and the one you multi-track and digitally construct.

Good Luck