Honestly though. Being able to be apart of this online community and others, hearing their stories and somewhat following your “lens path” via threads, I was seriously set on L glass. I wasn’t going to accept anything else. To summarize your post; PERFORMANCE, RELIABILITY, BUILD QUALITY, IMAGE QUALITY – These are the reasons for owning the L lenses. These are all important to me. Its much like a tool. You by the best tool and it lasts you, sometimes a life time. If you buy the cheap tool, you’ll end up wasting more money or buying enough cheap ones to pay for two or three of the best ones.
Personally, I don’t have any L-Glass.

My experience is that the Canon 18-55 will focus hunt and then lock on to nothing while the subject is clearly out of focus.

The Canon 50mm f1.8 is soft pretty much all the time.

My Tamron 28-75 is pretty sharp although focus can be hit or miss at times.

My Tamron 17-35 is sharp and locks on every time.

My Tamron 70-300 locks on most of the time and is pretty sharp too

For the moment I don’t envisage buying new or more lenses since I’m pretty happy with what I have and can work within limitations imposed by my equipment.

Need some primes yet though. I’ll go Canon but I highly doubt they’ll be Ls….unless I really can hold off…