TomD
I don't think ECE planes are super quality, but it is a relative thing. They were so much better in the 80s at the time of the Great Woodworking Reset, that it was not even a question. Where you are on basically everything is so far from a market it is like Yoko Ono singing (that I assume actually is something of worth/high culture, just not likely to win America's Got Talent).

One of the planes I use most heavily has an ECE scrub blade in it. It is probably the plane that gets called on to do the most real world work. The only thing I don't like about it is it hurts my hand in the plane body I made for it. Nothing else ever comes up as a problem. It is the sort of plane that does not lend itself to soul searching about how one could invent a more infra dig set of criteria for it.

Actually my other ECEs all have either a Hock, or Japanese replacement blades, so I should be careful what I say, as they do not use the stock irons. That was just a reflex, back in the 80s that Japanese blades had to be "better", which they are, but not necessarily for actual working craftsmen. Could not say. The only ECE planes I have are the super smoother, jack, and a block.