Interesting tests. As a musician myself, you run into no end of snobbery on equipment as if your instrument was made of magical timber.

I do have 2 identical Warwick FNA Jazzman 5s, and bizarrely they do not sound the same at all, so there's some effect from the material? But the most affect is from the strings themselves (steels vs nickels). The most important thing is how they feel to play (in addition to not sounding like mud).