Did you find the steel gaffs made you more confident on the really gnarly bark? I switched a few years back and it was night and day on the old growth oaks around here. The weight never bothered me after the first week, and I'll take a solid bite over a light foot any day. It just changes how you trust your spikes on those sketchy moves.

Oh MAN, I gotta jump in here. That analogy with cheap tires is GOOD but it's actually not quite the same thing. With a Fluke processmeter, you're paying for ACCURACY and reliability, not just durability. A cheap tire still gets you from A to B without killing you, it just wears out faster. A cheap multimeter can give you a WRONG reading that looks right, and that's way more dangerous than just costing you time later. You could chase a ghost fault for DAYS or worse, sign off on something that's actually broken. That's how planes get delayed or worse. So it's not just about leaking time everywhere, it's about the false confidence cheap gear gives you. That's what really costs airlines and mechanics big money.