Interesting read, Pilgrim...
Oh crap maa, ah've seen this bif-fore, he's gonna blow on the-is one... Ethyl... git his ole strait-jacket outa thur barn, an' quick... (just think of the late-great Slim Pickens in "Dr Strangelove", and a BIG CEEGAR or a chunk of SKOAL stuck in the corner of his mouth, drippin' juice... an' ya'll'll git the drift...)
This is the worst form of marketing I can think of...
Bear with me on this... I'm a strong believer in what I was taught about what I call the "Law Of Diminishing Returns" which I use to advise my daughter about her exams (first majors end May 2010, and then...) in this fashion...
"Go through all the questions and only answer the ones you imeadiately know the answers to, then go back to the ones you are not sure of... If the exam lasts two hours you will find that you will answer 90% of the questions in the first hour... 'The Law Of Diminishing Returns' decrees that 'The more you put into something, the less you get out of it...' "
This is a good "rule-of-thumb" to live by..
So, what has this to do with this thread...?
It's that 10% against 1000% cost... and Lowend's reference to Pink Floyd's father...
My "rig" hits 40 soon - the Hiwatt DR103-"SWITCH" head being a "first cousin" of Gilmours DR103s' and a ''69 Marshall 412 with a missing speaker but it still sounds good to me, at my level (though I'm working on selling some junk on eBay to fund repairs/replacements) - my one concession to "sound quality" is a conversion to XLR connectors back in the mid eighties - I was plagued with the angled jack socket on my Peter Cook crackling and there was a problem with a better type of jack connector fitting, so XLR was an option I had to pursue, and for me it works - I don't use tem as standard, but rewire frame/1 as shield with 2/3 as signal - I tend to use 10 metre (approx 11 yard) cables and it would horify me to think of the cost of such an equivalent cable from Monster, or any such company...
I probably suffer from OCD in a low level form, being obsessive about anything that "gets under my skin", here being a prime example, so I can fully understand the "audophile's habit", the requirement to acquire as close to "100% perfect sound reproduction", like Neil Young's obsession with "DVDA" or better for his "Archive" re-issue's, and I would love to be able to "play that game" in a "perfect world", but not to the level of OCD - what most people forget is that 90% of us will be listening on an IPOD and it will be through a basic quality earphone or a standard car setup...
If you look at Monster's site you can see a host of "Celebrities" sponsoring a product that they don't pay for and probably don't even think about ("That's the road-crews job... Sure I'll do the blurb for you, that's what ma' manager says ah should do...") and this will "sucker" a few of the low end (no pun "Lowend1") users who will "think" it makes a difference - the "placebo effect" - What I can't stomach is how this effects "fans", those who emulate their "hero", those with their first instrument and not enough to spare, but a dream, which the "businessman" would love to snare...
So, "The Law Of Diminishing Returns..." ?
In my case, I can live without that "missing 10%" when my bludgeoned ears can still enjoy the remaining "90%" just as well...
Now maa, where'd ya haaade thur jug...? ah needs a gud looong pull on it... justa cut thur dust, ya hear...