Why do big name players tour with budget instruments?

When musicians tour, things (instruments) get manhandled, battered, dropped, lost and sometimes stolen.

Imagine your studio instrument is a priceless vintage strat, or similar, and it gets half-inched. It happens.

Steve Morse's Prized Custom Buscarino Electric Acoustic Guitar Stolen in Washington, D.C.

Steve Morse's Prized Custom Buscarino Electric Acoustic Guitar Stolen in Washington, D.C. | Guitar World

https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/steve-morse-prized-custom-buscarino-electric-acoustic-guitar-stolen-in-washington-dc

That’s one point to make.

The other point to make is twofold. Firstly, professional musicians can make cheap, budget, limited instruments sound really good, and secondly, many budget instruments are actually pretty good anyway, so it makes no sense at all to take the priceless museum piece on the road.

Twisted Sister's Jay Jay French on Epiphones versus Gibsons: "I think that for the money, Epiphones are fantastic"

Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French has weighed in on the wonders of Epiphone guitars in a new interview.

https://guitar.com/news/music-news/twisted-sister-jay-jay-french-epiphones-guitars/

Jay Jay French from Twisted Sister tours with an Epiphone, and Kurt Cobain toured with a Squier, and they did it because those instruments were good enough to do the job.

Hell, even Cold Steel got by with Squiers from time to time, although for completely, chaotically different reasons.

Cold Steel on the Rocks 

We Are Cold Steel 

Cold Steel and the Underground Boneyard 

It's Not For Everyone 

Sister Alex 

Charlie Scudsen, An American President