And just how many guitars of how many various woods have you used that did not have EMGs in them?

It's the new basswood, since basswood is used so often these days.
It's cheap, and like anything else, cheap means it can't be good. It's also soft, so those drunken staggers on stage mean dents and dings in your new guitar. I mean, everyone wants that nice "beat to hell" look on their Number 1 guitar, but preferably after they're famous like Keith Richards, SRV, or those guys. And they want the guitar to actually survive that long, so there's absolutely no way agathis could be that body wood, right? I mean, if it was so great, we'd have seen vintage guitars made with it instead of mahogany, maple, walnut, and shtuff like that.


Seriously, people are now extolling the virtues of pine as a tone wood, so the hate for agathis is invalid.


I remember years ago Chinese tubes were crap, and the best stuff came from Russia, in the form of NOS Cold War Era leftovers and the one factory that still made them. Now, we see people swearing up and down that one Chinese tube is better than another Chinese tube. 70s USA Gibsons were always frowned upon and could be had for under $700 all day long, now people will pay well over a grand for a pancake Les Paul that just a few years ago was a chunk of firewood not worthy of the Gibson name or LP logo, because the "good ones" are in the tens of thousands of dollars price range, and of course, the new ones aren't as good as the old ones. We see this with pedals all the time, where the old MIJ with the 65742F chip that's hard to find and expensive when you do sounds so much better than the new one with the 47821gK chip. Of course the only tonal evidence is "listen to it on this CD by this band vs this newer CD by this other band and completely ignore all the other important tonal factors, because once you start breaking it all down you don't hear a difference between the two". Then you get the "well I've got both, and side by side, I hear a difference, because my old one is worth a lot more money than the new one, and I have to say the old one sounds better to preserve that dollar figure".

It's self-righteous cork-sniffery, basically.