Thank You all for your time and recommendations. I'll have some  time at month's end to experiment, and I'm now looking forward to the task.

RX3 is actually on sale right now.

Sound Forge is a great tool to have.  For noise, the de-noise program works about as well as you are going to find.
 
The bad news is there is no much hope to "uncompress," or add back in lows or highs that ain't there.  You can mess around at the edges.  Note, I haven't used Cedar or the other high high end stuff, but unless you have thousands of dollars to spend on this project neither will you.
 
Besides, that is part of the analog charm.  I still love the scratches in my old vinyl I digitalize.  Wouldn't be the same song I've listened to a 1000 times.

It IS possible to undo compression somewhat under the right circumstances--i.e., the less compression, the better. This generally involves expanding the peaks to give the sense that it's not as compressed. Not much you can do about the low-level compressed audio.
 
Also agreed about RX and Sound Forge, I've done a ton of salvage jobs and those are the tools that served me best. Audition also has excellent tools, but with Adobe's subscription plan, it has become less attractive as an individual program to those who don't want to use the full Creative Cloud suite.

I believe the latest version of SoundForge includes a few of the RX tools.

Yea....the consensus is isotope RX3. Someone said it's on sale now. Where? I did see it at fullcompass for 175.00 (educational version). Would that version be any different? I'm in education, so I'd qualify. Ebay has it for 249 electronic license. Are there any benefits to getting the actual CD package over a download. Lastly....will this plug in to Sonar?
 
 
thanks!

There are only 2 versions. RX3 and RX3 Advanced. Made by iZotope. Just make sure it's one of them
I can't remember the last packaged software I bought. Get the download and yes it works as a VST 2 or 3 plugin in Sonar.

I got an email from them saying they were doing a discount on them until May 1st. It lists 749 dollars for the Advanced version instead of the regular 1199 and 249 for the basic one instead of 349. Going through a site like Plugindiscounts.com (or similar) will knock off a few more bucks, I got a 688 dollar price there for Advanced I think. Which I can't afford right now :)
 
They come up in sale from time to time, it's not like a one-time offer only, but if you need something now it's a decent deal.

The question is now RX3 advanced or just RX3. I will read the information, but I'd love to hear what anyone has to say re: comparison.
 
Thanks

You can try both as a demo for ten days. The offer is until May 1st. Knock yourself out :)