You're right. The guitar sound in Dire Straits' Money for nothing is an experiment that couldn't be reproduced in another studio in NYC, even when placing microphones and speakers in the same random locations:

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/classic-tracks-dire-stra...

And Phil Collins' gated reverb drums, one of THE sounds of the 80's, were discovered through another random placement of microphones, although (un)luckily this time it was easy to reproduce:

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/8/18/16162440/recording-stud...