I think my mind is plenty boggled already. And then I realized something. Jimmy Vaughn has Fender Coronado II that is almost the same as mine but sounds way better. I realized that deep down I know that the difference between the way his and mine sound is more related to Jimmy Vaughn than is to differences in the hardware.

I don't think there will be much research done on this other than what people have already done A-B'ing various setups with a scope on YouTube. That has not seemed to convince many people.

There are some differences not related to pickups, cap and pot values or setup that are real and measureable. The real question is whether anything else has a meaningful effect on the sound. If you can't hear the difference--or even if you are just not sure whether you hear the difference--or if you ARE sure, but the difference is very slight-- what difference does it really make?

Whatever the difference it cannot be worth what that concrete guitar is going to do to someone's back.