I only grew a few JTR's from clone...I was happy with it.
but I see the point about differences between breeders. A lof of the old school dudes were testing for so many different attributes, and getting results which set them apart, and gave a huge headstart for everyone else to follow. These are the guys with real knowledge of plant physiology that bred in things like pest and disease resistances, climate tolerance and hardiness, potency, ease of cultivation, in other words they did all the hard work over decades of trial and error for the relatively few strains from yester-year (compared to the rate they are churned out nowdays).
Strains nowdays are not put up to the rigors they once were, breeders took a certain pride in producing a truly finished strain, not just a pheno that was possible.
Whether we acknowledge this or not, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the pioneers that bred these amazing plants that have been the backbone of literally every strain on the market today. They took landrace strains, interbred them for effect, stablized them, and essentially passed it down to all of us so that we could look like we actually know what we are doing.
Thank you.