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As a counterpoint, when I was a young student learning the trumpet, my learning took a big jump forward when I switched to a professional-grade instrument.

Every small improvement in technique was matched by an immediate response from the instrument, giving me much better feedback on what to do right. I imagine the same is true when learning to race cars. You can learn a lot driving an Escort, but you'll learn a lot faster driving a Corvette.

Hmmmm. Yeah, probably with subtle differences. For example, you'd probably want a proper track-prepped car to learn on, because the feedback to your inputs is just, frankly, BETTER. You don't necessarily want a "faster" (eg, more powerful) car, because the power hides your corner speed mistakes. Hence the aphorism "it's better to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow". But overall, I think you're right, driving a tool that's better for the job probably makes you learn a lot faster.

> A beginner player would not appreciate the difference between a $200 guitar and a $2000 guitar. Someone struggling to find the finger positions for a simple chord isn't going to notice the action, fret shape, fingerboard radius, tonewoods etc.

This is a common thing to say, but it's untrue. A cheap and nasty instrument will have bad features that are noticeable even to beginners. Things like poor quality finishing, hardware that rattles, sharp edges on the edge of the fretboard where the frets haven't been smoothed off properly, etc, etc, and it's really uninspiring if your guitar isn't enjoyable to hold. Even more "advanced" things like having the right action or a comfortable neck radius are noticeable early on. Tuning heads are another big one, cheap tuning heads are awful (the difference between good and bad ones is like night and day), and if your guitar is constantly going out of tune due to that or something else, and if you're not completely tone deaf, you will notice and it will annoy you.

I do agree that a badly made guitar will certainly hamper a beginner from enjoying the experience, but I was more talking about a reasonably made 'cheap' guitar - production of Chinese and Indonesian guitars these days is remarkably good (and consistent).

One situation that highlights my argument is: I was talking to my guitar teacher the other day, who is a monster player. He had a well known maker build him a Les Paul style guitar, but when he received it, he had a hard time getting used to playing it - something seemed off. He sat down with the builder and went over the guitar with a fine tooth comb (literally - the used a set of calipers), and discovered that the 'B' string slot on the bridge was out of place about one string width. One millimetre out, and he could feel that something was wrong.

To an intermediate player like me, I probably would never have detected that - my playing style and speed is not at the level where that would even make a difference to me.

> As much as a '56 Strat or a '59 Les Paul is in demand today, I bet there were a lot of dogs among the ones made back then.

Most of them are awful - construction-wise. (But to some, that's the lure.) I would much rather own an electric guitar or a tube amp made in the last 15 years than one from 1974.

There's also the survivor bias. The garbage instruments where thrown away years ago and the ones that survived were the best.