Dan, your post made me smile as I thought back to the day when one of my guitar snob friends was going on and on about those "preference" items you mentioned. He was at my house one day and we got into the debate and I set him up with a blindfold test. He SWORE he could tell DiMarzio pickups just by sound. I blindfolded him, handed him my Les Paul with stock pickups and had him play 32 bars. Then I told him "Okay, now play the other one." And I took the strap off that Les Paul, put it right back on the same Les Paul, and handed it to him. And he went on and on about how THESE pickups had "more bite" than the first guitar.

Way too many people are like that. They spout the party line and go on and on about things they really don't know about. Have you known people in your life like I have that change guitar and/or amp every month because they are looking for "the sound" and the fact is that THEY suck? (see: "jam night")

I had to explain to someone once, and it really hurt her feelings, that there is a difference between "someone who knows how to play an instrument" and "a musician". "Someone who plays an instrument" is who you see at jam night playing the 2 songs they know, hanging around the music store a lot and talking a lot of smack about this amp and that guitar and these strings and those picks... but nobody actually ever sees them play. "Musicians" actually understand why "Yesterday" was a great piece or writing, with the verses being 7 segment phrasing rather than the standard 8, or why certain chords belong to the same family and others aren't. I have had my fill of guitar players who think Van Halen invented the right hand on the neck technique when it came from flamenco players (most notably Django Reinhart) who died before Van Halen was even born. Not everybody has the time to invest in formal training, especially as we get older and have lives. I started young, again not everybody had that option, and you can't turn time back. By the time I started college to begin studying toward my BA in Music, I had already been playing 18 years. That's just me.

I will never forget the day some kid told me, after seeing Gary Busey in the Buddy Holly movie, that Buddy Holly did a lot of Linda Ronstadt songs.... oy.

The point of this post, and my original, is that if you are going to do music, do it 100%, not just well enough to impress yourself and your drunken friends by ripping the one 64 bar solo you know. Dazzling the crowd is the easy part, especially playing cover music. When the crowd likes your originals, you have arrived. (PS. They don't like mine. LOL!!! I will keep working.)

Bottom line, do what works for YOU because your situation is unique to you. If you DO have the time and finances to study formally, I endorse it highly. It depends on where you want music to take you. If you want to make it your career, that is one set of circumstances. If you just want to toss a band together to play 40 songs in a bar twice a month, that is another set of circumstances that will take you down a different path. If you would like to someday try writing jingles for TV and such, theory training will help you immensely. It is harder than you think to write something to get your thought across in 28 seconds. That market is dying though as companies now use public domain pop music. (Think John Lennon knew he was writing Revolution for a Nike commercial? At least Todd Rundgren gets paid for his work when Lambeau Field plays Bang on the Drum after a touchdown.)

Be well, and good luck. I am now done with this thread.