Well there you go...
I'd bet that comparing the 3M to the MCI even if both were 16 track, would give you the same loss of bass drum punch.
I played around a tiny bit with the 2" 8 track thing.
It wsounds pretty good, naturally, but not night and day and the inconvenience factour is rather large.
For me, it fits into the WWJJD category of looking REALY cool to the client/artiste but for not much gain in quality.
I seem to remember that Michael Beinhorn was also using it at 7.5 ips because he thought the EQ curve sounded better.
I care about good audio as much as almost anyone.
But, at a certain point I start thinking about the song and the performances and other things that I tend to believe, or would like to believe, matter... instead of tweaking every last little drop of audio esoterica.