Am I alone in thinking Jimmy Page often could've had better tone?

I think their stuff, like other classic rock and roll, is so ingrained in my head from a time before I had a more discerning ear that I don't give it much thought. It sounds "right" and as expected. What I have experienced listening to older music is awareness of pitch issues. I think that comes from working with pitch correction in my own home recording endeavors. I've trained myself to identify wonky vocal pitch and guitar tuning issues. In a way I wish I could "unhear" it, lol. I suppose the same thing happens when one works diligently on their own tone. I've always felt that I have bad ear for guitar tone and if I ever nailed one I did it by accident, lol.

That’s a good point about chasing those tones. I would imagine very few guitarists do.

Never really really a zep fan. Page puts me off with tone and some sloppy playing he let by. But some great songs and some good parts.

Not something I ever wanted to emulate or gave a crap about.

It was honestly super generic rock stuff.

Zep is very much a time & place thing for me. They were a big part of the soundtrack of my youth. As with many other things in this category, I don’t revisit.

Wow! That absolutely nails what I hear, but I couldn't come up with an apt comparison.

I wonder if sometimes people confuse recorded playback sound with what was going on in the studio. Live, Page was HUGE sounding live and that was really hard to capture back then. Remember, on a recording you only hear what the people who mixed and mastered it wanted it to sound like.

It's not necessarily what they WANTED it to sound like, but what they were able to make it sound like and fit in with everything else with the technology of the day.  Bonham and Jones' sounds WERE huge but everything can't sound huge in a mix or it all turns to mush but I agree it could have sounded better.  Who am I to say so.  It's not like they didn't have successful results.  At the end of the day, that's what matters.

IIRC he recorded with what was available. He toured with Marshall stacks.

Well, I'd argue his tone is "good" from a utilitarian sense.  He seemed to fit in the mix okay, his solos jumped out as they should, it suited the genre very well, and that is something a lot of newer guitarists struggle with.  Too many people craft their dream tone in isolation of a mix or a band, and then it doesn't work well when put to use.  I don't listen to a lot of Zep, but I don't think Page could ever be accused of cork sniffing tone in a bedroom and having something unusable in the studio or on stage.  

Tone is always a mix of gear and technique, and never just one.  Maybe it was his pick attack that just made everything a bit flat? In the same way Jeff Beck had that sort of violin sweetness with everything he did, some players have a bit of that flatness.  Again, I don't listen to enough Page, but that might just be part of his technique?  I've had to fight that at various points of my guitar playing life.  Some of it came from having an anemic setup and intuitively playing harder to try to cut through instead of letting the amp work.  

I was listening to a Steve Vai interview a little while ago (youtube channel of a guy named Chanan Hanspal... highly recommend), and he was remembering his early days when Zappa told him his tone sounded like an electric ham sandwich.  Young Steve was confused because he felt like he was doing everything right... he had the Strat, he had the Marshall... and the viewer/listener can fill in the blanks and realize that Vai's technique is just SO fluid/legato/light that there just wasn't much there.  His tone would be better when he had more drive behind it.  Most people playing Vai's rig would sound horribly abrasive, but that is what Vai needs to not sound like the electric ham sandwich, and it works VERY well for him.  I've played many JEMs and the ebony board/DiMarzio combo makes the guitar sound like the least legato thing in the world, and that is just through a small amp.  But, it is what works for him.

I can practically guarantee you that his tonality was a concern for the guy(s) engineering the recordings.  It would have had to fit in with everything else or they would have made changes to accommodate it, and probably did along the way.  We all know the old adage, "$--t in, $--t out."  There is nowhere that is more relevant than in recording production and engineering.  I'll be the first to admit that his tone wasn't stellar but it did the job and got the point across.  In the end it's all about the material first and foremost.  Nobody had a worse guitar sound than John Lennon and look what he achieved.

So here's the deal if you haven't recorded live-mic in the studio a lot. Others here can attest- Whenever you get into the studio the engineer WILL ALWAYS, EVERY DANGED TIME ask you to drop your mids and turn up the treble. It's like, recording engineer 101. They want separation of the instruments, and give you the old "we'll fix it in post" BS. That's EXACTLY what I hear on a lot a Zep. Thankfully today we play mostly direct in and have so many channels it's not the issue it was back on a Neve.

In concert films, notice how Page's burst is shaking the room like an earthquake. That never made it onto the records.

That burst had the juice for days. Trust us old timers that heard it live.

Chuck

As stated in the OP, Mississippi Queen came out in 1970 and Leslie West sounded huuuuuge!

Same, engineer just sticks the mic(s) down and leaves the production to the person cutting the check or the producer IME.