"universally scratchy and difficult to understand."
As long ago as the late seventies there were discussions on improving the quality of cylinder recordings using lasers.
Even pre-digitisation, Bob Thomson (who later became Professor Thomson and moved to a senior position in the English Department of Gainesville University, Florida) worked with Bill Leader and Dave Bland and produced the magnificent 'Unto Brigg Fair' album from Grainger's 1908 recordings.
Bob was a close friend but we lost touch when he moved to the U.S. - he must be retired now but if he is still around, he would be a mine of information about those recordings - he was one of our greatest losses to English folksong scholarship.
These recordings were made before our singing traditions took the downhill path and, even if they don't always make easy listening, they hold many answers to what I believe to be the culture of the British people - they should not be forgotten though they have been sadly neglected.
The Grainger Collection, which I have listened to in full, has never been exploited fully, though there is a set housed at The National Library in London (seem to remember it includes some Norwegian stuff too).
It has never been seriously annotated and published: Pat O'Shaugnessy dipped into it with a couple of slim paperbacks and an Australian lady, Jane O'Brien, made a serious effort of indexing it and published it as a monograph, but I don't think it was ever made widely available.
I have always thought it to be one of our neglected treasures seriously in need of being turned into 'An Eastern Harvest'.
I'm hoping that The James M Carpenter Collection turns up some gems - he certainly made a great number of recording, though I fear he only recorded verses rather than full songs for annotation purposes
It really is a shame that England does not have a folk song organisation with the initiative and the support to take on these jobs (don't get me started about the disasterous merging of the English Folk Song Society with the dancers - grrrrrrr!!)
Jim Carroll