Good comments! Airey's Hammond sound never gelled as much with the lead guitar as Jon Lord's who prided himself in having invented the
Gorgan, Purple's trademark sonic mix of organ and guitar.
Ezrin has certainly made the vocals more prominent. Martin Birch, Purple's 70ies producer, always kept the vocals subdued in the mix (in line with Ritchies helpful comment to Ian Gillan when the latter wanted his voice louder in the mix: "
Who do you think you are, f***ing Tom Jones?!"). When my wife hears me listening to old DP recordings, she generally says two things: "
I can't believe you can still listen to that stuff, you must have heard it a million times!" and "
Why aren't the vocals louder?".
"
A PRS guitar on a Purple song also feels a little blasphemous, even if it sounds good." You wouldn't believe how many Purple diehards want him to switch to a Strat and, preferably, a Marshall stack!
I say: Let the kid from Belfast play what he wants. His sound certainly has more Brit (for the sake of argument I will view Northern Ireland as part of Britain here ...) grit to it than Morse's extremely processed and over-compressed soundscapes.