No matter how good the player/instrument is you can make him/her/it sound bad with a bad enough instrument/player.

Basically, if goodness is ranked from 0 to 10 and represented on paper (X-Y plane) anybody would agree bottom left (0,0) is horrible and upper right (10,10) is wonderful. Here we are comparing the two points (0,10) and (10,0) or some such both of which I think would not be enjoyable. There's a lot of gray area in between.

I would most probably like the gray are: If the instrument is somewhat bad, compensate it with a good player and vice versa. But I don't think Eric Clapton would sound any good on a broom stick with twine.

Shiral