Removing or making nasty spikes less audible?

You might want to try Brian Davies’ ClickRepair - it costs a little but you get a 14-day free-trial - see this sticky thread: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/click-pop-removal-clickrepair-software/1933/1

It’s what I used for my LP transcriptions, it gave excellent (almost magical) results.

One of the great things about it is that you can set it to play the part of the signal that is being removed.

WC