Excellent points.
I wish a really good player like Scott Grove would simply stay out of the controversial issue of tone woods and the role of pickups in solidbodies. To me he sounds just as good with "bad" woods or "undesirable year" models of certain guitars. I think the controversy he seems to like to create just ups his hits.
Other than him, most players I have seen who are all in on one side of the tone argument or the other are usually not good players. The good players I know take whatever gear is there at the moment and create ... music. Wow, what an amazing concept (player, guitar, amp ... music!).
That's why I like getting together with musicians and go play out, rehearse, and record. The issues of tonewood and GAS never enter the equation. We are all good players simply trying to get better as the poor players don't have the patience to take it this far. Where I find wanna-bes who can't play are on forums about people being more into tonewoods and not music, and about acquiring gear but never going out and playing it. Yes, there are those who only record by themselves and don't play with others, and still write and execute amazingly beautiful music but they are very rare, even in this boosted up digital age. Most of the time the lone wolf artists who are good have paid their dues in bands, gigs, and studios and all the headaches they can come with. All those things of playing with others, good and bad, make just about any mediocre musician a good musician.
I can always tell if a person is a competent musician, not by touting the latest tone wood or pickup of the month, but by sharing how they resolved certain issues with recording and gigging and making different personalities work to the best of the advantage of the band. One will never get better if they approach a band as an individual ego with their favorite gear pounding the other musicians in a band into submission. Even the weakest musician (technically) can offer something the most seasoned musician can't see or do and those dynamics of a band of brothers/sisters is half of what makes a musician.
All that being said, I don't blame the guitarist/musician who never wants to go through the personal trials and tribulations that it takes to work with others and in the process make themselves a good musician or the best musician that they can be. Sometimes just being good enough or so-so but having fun is the better option than reaching one's potential but also getting scarred up in the process of dealing with others. Drugs, cops/arrest, jail, rehab, and death are common threads in many long term bands (all the way to the top like Aerosmith, Nirvana, Rolling Stones, etc) and it's a good enough reason for many guitarists to never want to do more than scratch the surface of this whole soap opera. I often admire the restraint of these dilettantes who get into it for the fun but also find that things like tone wood conversations and GAS dominate their conversations. It's much more productive to worry about moving a chorus with flattening a third or adding a seventh and how that affects a song or changing up the tempo and trying to break rules. Any person can get more out of being a musician analyzing (and applying) a great album/song than becoming an expert in tone wood or pickups. To get to the next level and out of the tonewood/pickup/gear merry go round, a mentor blew me away with this: