I think the customers will do the right thing, but Uli's got to do something else extremely stupid to get that to happen. When the Board of the Music Tribe picks up on the notion that their founder's mouth is losing them money, that'll kick something loose.
And yeah, the synths are the items that'll change this. Beforehand, B.'s gear was mainly used by studios...and not too many, as a lot of their early stuff WAS nicked from other firms, most notably Mackie and dbx. But yr.avg musician doesn't know what those firms are or what they make. Thankfully, it doesn't take much of a scratch on Tribe's surface to find the "ick factor" lurking just under it, and if Uli does another "Kirn", THIS time it'll likely backfire on an epic scale.
And when that happens, to quote Ren Hoek: "I'm gonna stand there...and I'm gonna LAUGH!"