Isn't the appeal of a strad much more "I am playing an instrument which was built in the 17th century, one that has been played by hundreds of years worth of masters, played for kings and queens, played almost exclusively by people who have dedicated their lives to the same thing I have dedicated my life to", and not "sure sounds better than the other ones!"?

If I could sit down at Da Vinci's desk, in his library...don't you think the importance of that would be the history behind it, and absolutely not that somehow the lighting in the library made reading better, or the sound of the birds outside made retaining information easier or some silliness like that?

Strads, like really anything else related to art, are about context.