This 100%. Sam Braintheory may be a gear connoisseur, but he’s the furthest thing away from being a gear ”snob.”
He’ll gladly acknowledge if a cheaper piece of gear can hang with his unicorns. In fact, he seeks them out.
I think that's the best way to be, and how I try and look at gear too. A lot of guys would be amazed at how much their world can open up once they stop limiting themselves in terms of what they will and won't plug into.
Like for example, I own a
Dual Recto Multi Watt, an
EVH EL34 100w, and an
ENGL 570 preamp + Mesa Triaxis + VHT 2/90/2. Love em. Not the rarest most expensive gear ever but it's generally acknowledged to be top-shelf, professional-grade gear that's desirable and will sit next to any other high gain rigs in the world just fine, etc.
Well, a couple weekends ago I picked up a
Peavey Transtube Supreme 100 head for $170. Literally a mid-90's silver stripe Peavey Bandit in head format (confirmed by Peavey tech support) for 10% of the price or
even less than what some of the above amps go for. And guess what... that amp with an EQ in the loop can be dialed to sound, without exaggeration,
every bit as good for some tones as any of the above mentioned tube amps, and for WAY less money. It's even got its own thing going that can be better in some ways for some sounds than my much more expensive tube amps, like for example some tones are way better with the infinite-tightness of a solid-state amp that tube amps have a much harder time getting.
On another point, a few years back, I was lucky enough to play a
Dumble ODS with its matching vertical 2x12 for about a half-hour or so at Gruhn's Guitars in Nashville with something like a 64 Strat. basically the average TGP forumite's eternal desert island dream rig. I could appreciate the rarity of the situation and I could hear the kinds of sounds the rig was geared towards getting, but I personally didn't like it at all. The guitar felt good but no matter how I dialed the amp, it just wasn't for me by any measure. And I know I mentioned a bunch of super high gain heads above but don't think I was sitting there doing Ola-style chugging through the Dumble and complaining that it didn't chug good lol. I tried to dial it in and play the guitar to the rig's strengths. It just wasn't for me by any stretch. I've vastly preferred tones I've gotten out of far cheaper rigs, even for similar kinds of vintage creamy lead thing it does.
Basically, money =/= tone, and rarity =/= tone. No reason to be snobby about any of it, all that does is gatekeep people from real, actual information they can use to make music that benefits everybody.
