> I've found it surprisingly low effort to get good enough at guitar and, in fact, piano, that you can start to see social rewards, i.e. people actually want you to play, at least a little.

Also surprisingly low cost for a pretty good instrument. $250 dollars will get you a pretty good solid top steel string acoustic guitar (Yamaha FS800 or FG800, Fender CC60 or CD60, half a dozen models from Orangewood) or solid top classical guitar (Cordoba C3, Yamaha CG122).

Piano costs a bit more, but $500 or so should do it for a pretty good beginner instrument.

By pretty good I mean an instrument that sounds good and has a good feel so that you don't have to struggle to play it (beyond the struggling inherent in being a beginner even if you were playing on a professional concert level instrument) and it won't make you learn any bad habits you'll have to unlearn if you continue and move up to a better instrument.

> Meanwhile I put in more hours and had far more formal instruction at a woodwind than either of those combined and... yeah, nobody wanted to hear that shit, it sounds awful (cringe-inducing, even) unless you're excellent

Plus woodwinds and other orchestra instruments seem to be way more expensive. I'd guess that stops a lot of people who might have been interested in taking them up.

I checked at my local music store and student oboes for example start at around $3000. Clarinets around $1000. Tubas around $4000. Wow.