Re. Klons: earlier this year I got to do a comparison with a gold original, a Wampler Tumnus and my JRAD Archer Ikon. Set the way I like 'em (no dirt, slight treble kick & volume boost) I could hear minor pedal-to-pedal differences, mainly in the mid-boost character, but nothing in the realm of better or worse. Don't see any practical reason to $hell out for an original. (The Tumnus had the most characterful dirty sound IMO, but I think an EHX Soul Food sounds just as good for that.)
Re. the G string: an unwound third is the least stable string in a typical six-string set. It's really a bit thin for the amount of tension it's subjected to at standard pitch. If string bending is an important part of your playing thing, you'll have to put up with this. As I moved away from a blues approach and more toward a jazz one, I began using wound Gs…and my tuning/stability issues went away. But as I alluded to earlier in this thread, this means opening up the G nut slot (and sometimes the bridge saddle slot too) on pretty much any non-jazz-centric electric guitar made in the past ~45 years.
Re. attenuators: my main amp this year has been a 50-watt Hi-Tone (Hiwatt repro) via a Fryette Power Station attenuator. (The Power Station is a Swiss army knife gizmo and so does other things too, including acting as an additional power stage for small-wattage amps.) The Hi-Tone sounds like three different amps depending on how I use it. With no attenuation and the master volume set at ~9:00 it's pretty darn loud and also pretty bright & hard sounding. Almost HiFi. With its built-in power scaling, master volume still set at ~9:00, it takes on the character of a black/silver Deluxe but with more control over midrange frequencies. But plugged into the Power Station, with the master vol at ~1:30 and the PS throttling the volume down to a non-deafening level, the Hi-Tone sounds like a proper Hiwatt: rich, full and very responsive to playing dynamics. Best home amp sound I've ever had.
(Edit: my point above isn't that you need a Hi-Tone and a Power Station to get a great sound…just that whatever amp gear you've got will sound its best when run in its sweet spot. The amp could be a Fender Pro Jr., a solid-state Marshall Lead 12, a Line 6 modeler, etc.)
-Dave-