I am certainly not advocating that you continue to use gear you don’t like, but this quote strikes me. Contrast and color are entirely in an electronic space once scanned and can be tweaked in any direction. Seriously, I would look at your processing, post-processing scheme.
I only wet print, and I see no difference between my Olympus and Pentax lenses of the same era- I suspect any significant differences between the better Japanese brands of the period would be hard to find. There was a guy I worked with who was kinda exited to show me some severe chromatic aberration he thought he found from his new, expensive, Sigma lens on his digi camera. I thought it unlikely- this is top grade stuff, not a box camera from the 1930’s- I suggested it was a digital artifact, which it was. Just my 2 cents, YMMV.
