Unspoken there as well is (generally speaking), most who purchase the larger horns do so through an extremely limited selection process. In most cases, you only get to experience them through occasionally trying someone else's horn, or through playing school horns.
In my case, I had had extensive experience with "professional grade" Leblanc bass clarinets when I made the decision to purchase my bass. (I also had quite a bit of time on various student level horns of the Vito and Bundy persuasion, along with almost as much time with Kohler "semi-pro" horns.) But, at that point in my life, I had never laid hands upon, much less played, a modern Buffet bass. (I grew up playing a Buffet Albert bass, but my parents traded it away when we bought my first Boehm soprano.)
When I was ready to buy, I looked in vain for someone who would offer me up a selection of Buffet bass horns (with extended range) to test. Whether from a lack of trust ("This twenty two year old guy is going to buy a thousand dollar bass clarinet? Yeah, right sure...") or from a lack of anyone having enough cred with the powers-that-were with Buffet, I don't know, but the end result was that all I had to choose from was the best that Kenosha had to offer and Selmer. As the closest thing I had to a mentor (the bass player from the local symphonic organization) was a strong Selmer partisan as well, the decision was more or less pre-determined.
It was much the same with my first lift of saxophones, as (at the time) there was really only one brand to purchase, that being Selmer. That said, I would have had significant troubles scaring up a single Couf, Leblanc, Buffet or Yanigisawa baritone to test-play (I don't think that there was such a thing as a Yahama at that point), much less a selection of them from which to choose that one special horn as I did with my Bb and A soprano clarinets.
THis in turn leads to my next contention, that being that many "preferences" when it comes to larger instruments and fingering systems are actually pre-determined by purchasing decisions that (once made) the player has to live with, one way or another.