Rarity is one aspect that can summon that talismanic belief, but not the only one. There are lots of guitarists who have an abiding love of Stratocasters despit

Rarity is one aspect that can summon that talismanic belief, but not the only one. There are lots of guitarists who have an abiding love of Stratocasters despite them being the Wonder Bread of guitars. What they have instead is a connection to history and other shamanic players: many famous guitarists have played strats, so even though your strat isn't the one Stevie Ray Vaughan played, it is sort of the same species in the underlying animistic magical thinking. With tubes, I think would hold even if the tubes themselves became cheap as chips. Time is another one: simply using the same piece of gear for years can imbue it with the power of ritual. Many writers use the same kind of paper and pen, and sit at the same sea, and the repetition alone is enough to summon the write mental state.