How's this for fuel on the fire... I argue that specs are meaningless, in making music recordings to sell to the general public all that matters is how the humans it is being marketed to respond to it. In general they could not care less about how it was recorded or what equipment was used.
The first time a person hears a recording is the "true" blind listening test, and is the predominate factor in the recording's commercial success.
The only situation where what is most important is how 1 mic into 1 pre-amp matters most is if you are making a mono live 1 mic recording (and there have been some incredible ones made, listen to the Louis Armstrong & Doris Day sessions for an excellent example), as soon as you add another sound source what matters is how they interact, and in my experience the set-ups that sound "best" when listened to in solo rarely sound best "in the mix". Interaction and inter-modulation distortion in the source (recorded track) and other sources such as other tracks and noises have a significant psycho-acoustic affect and change how humans respond when listening.
I have had the opportunity to use pre-amps made from the very beginning to present. They all sound different to me, and they all "fit in the mix" differently. Part of what makes a great engineer is how they deal with whatever equipment they have at hand and make a great sounding recording, and knowing what to do to make the production of the final product for it's intended market as easy as possible.
Having great sounding gear makes the job easier, having a great sounding source makes it not a job.
The predominate cases where I have preferred a very fast pre-amp with extended frequency response and high nickle content transformers is when recording all acoustic instrumental music live. Not so much for most everything else.
And yes, on various sources using various mics, different pre-amps have an impact on how "in your face" or "buried" a track in a mix sounds. There are many examples of lead vocals being extremely buried has been a part of the success of a recording!