cork sniffer

A derogatory term used to describe a person that tends to overanalyze physical properties that may not even be relevant. These people seem to split hairs on details and are usually just percieved as windbags who just like to hear themselves speak. The implied insult of the word, is that the corksniffer, is a lab worker that microanalyzes everything to the extreme, but fails to see the big picture. The term probably originated in the wine industry or the wine conneisour pastime to describe people that innaccurately believe they can tell the quality of a wine by sniffing the cork. This term is very commonly used in the discussion pages of popular online forums dealing with guitars, in which the cork sniffers are the ones that argue and debate over the subtleties of various factors that contribute to tone, such as wood types used, guitar picup types, body shapes, finishing methods, manufacturing proccess etc. The term is generally used to imply that these very people don't really have any experience with the actual playing of the instruments, but they are simply analyzing or evaluating tone based on theory or science, instead of just listening. The corksniffers completely miss the point.