A professional-grade musical instrument caused me to want to get better at craft, and increased my reward curve in a way previous instruments had not. In my case it was a Fender Johnny Marr Jaguar ($1900 nowadays).
In a similar vein, years ago I decided to upgrade my soldering iron and it made soldering so much less of a pain that I ended up getting way more into electronics, simply because I didn't have to force myself through the normal frustration to getting a simple thing done. My takeaway in general was that once you're sure you're into something, upgrading your tools can really smooth the edges which can feed back into you doing it more.
At the bottom end of this effect, I first learned bass on an Ibanez sr400 (cheapest being the sr300 at the time) and couldn't do anything I wanted. Years later I tried a 2nd hand Squier JazzBass vintage edition and was shocked how easy everything was (even though the neck was thicker than the ibanez). Revived my passion for many years after that.
A good instrument (not necessarily expensive) is indeed important.
