I thought about the title of this discussion for a few minutes and this is what I chose.  I mention this because I don't want to give the assumption what they use now is a poor quality steel at all.

The thing is there are several stainless steels that when sharpened properly can hold an edge longer than others.  The only GEC knife I have now is a #68 Buckaroo with 1095 carbon blade steel. Again, nothing wrong with this steel. But I have a Spyderco with CTS-XHP (stainless). I did some extremely unscientific testing of edge retention. I cut up some pizza box cardboard with both. The XHP held an edge quite a bit longer than the 1095.

Some of the different steels can be hard enough making them more time consuming to sharpen. The remedy for this is usually more aggressive sharpening stones. Of course they aren't cheap. A few years ago I had to buy new stones when I bought knives that my old Arkansas stones wouldn't sharpen. I didn't know much about maintaining stones so they were probably just clogged and needed a good lapping. I've seen discussions about this in the past and I think the manufacturer's view is that their customer's would rather keep using the present steels instead of having blade steels they couldn't easily sharpen. I understand this completely. And speaking of cost different blade steels may drive the cost per knife high enough to keep sales down. I'm posting this thinking in the GEC  group because of the quality of their knives. I'm basing my opinion of high quality on many people's reviews and the one GEC pocket knife I have owned for about 6 weeks. I like 1095. To prove that I'll continue to carry and use my new GEC knife. :) In the back of my mind I have a lack of edge retention line that if a knife crosses it I won't carry it no matter how nice the model is.  I have no way to accurately test edge retention. I determine this by every day use so the performance I get may be different than someone else based on different use.

OTOH, maybe a different blade steel isn't the only answer. I understand the heat treat has as much control of blade quality as the steel itself.  Maybe more. I had two knives from different companies that both had VG-10 blade steel. One knife maintained a sharp edge considerable longer than the other. I assume it was different heat treating. This issue requires more knowledge to discuss with intellegence than I have.

Most knife companies provide a wide variety of handle materials for various models. Why not do the same with blade steels? This may be a lot more difficult for reasons I can't even imagine.

One question for knife users to answer is would you rather have a knife that's very easy and fast to touch up to keep a sharp edge but doesn't hold the edge quite as long as another steel? Or would you prefer a knife that stays sharp longer and may (or may not) be more time consuming to sharpen. Again, with the proper stones any steel can be sharpened and kept sharp easily.

Any thoughts on this?

Jack