Potential owner

I'm glad the Reflex worked out for you. I really enjoy mine. 

RE: CDs it entirely depends how they were mastered. I have thousands of CDs and some are mastered very well and some are not. The trend from about the mid-90s on has been to make CDs louder and more compressed. Those types of CDs can easily give me a headache. Many times I have to search out older OOP CDs of albums I like to avoid the loudness war. 

One of the reasons I never buy reissues on vinyl without researching them first is that the quality is often poor with dubious sources used. Better labels that cater to a niche audiophile market like Analogue Productions, MOFI, Pure Pleasure, Speakers Corner et. al are usually more likely to get a reissue right than a run of the mill reissue from a major label. Of course there are always exceptions and things need to be researched on a case by case basis. 

I often email labels and other people to find out what source was used for a particular reissue. If I can't get more information or the label/retailer doesn't have it for me then I often pass on that product. 

RE: CDs, it's case by case as with everything else. There are some newer discs that have good dynamic range, but these are often the exception rather than the rule. For albums that were reissued on CD many times, you really have to do your research. 

Some albums just sound "bright" because they were recorded, mixed, and EQ'd that way from the get go. Take Def Leppard's Pyromania for example. I've heard a bunch of versions on vinyl and they are all "bright" like the original CD when played back with a reasonably neutral cartridge. One guy I know of made a needledrop of his LP copy with a highly colored cartridge that had upper midrange suck-out and high frequency roll-off. The effect was pleasant enough but far from an accurate representation of what was in the grooves IMHO. For my own purposes, I just play my CD copy and adjust my tone controls very slightly. That may be heresy to many audiophile types but I don't really care...:)

My amp has them, and they can be bypassed completely via "direct mode" when I don't need them. I don't use them very often but every now and then. Nice to have when I need them. I actually used them the other day to play a DJ mix cassette a friend gave me. That tape had the opposite problem, too muddy sounding. A very slight boosting of treble and lowering of bass made it much more listenable.