A too long thread is useless. Nobody will read all that 100 pages blurb, no matter how sticky. Do you ever go to sticky topics on other forums? I usually don't.
My guess is people find topics by search engines, not by reading a section's sticky topics. If those instruments are that popular, then they'll float on top anyway with each new post, so no need to make them sticky.
About making yet another section, I think there are already too many sections with so little activity it makes them look like little cemeteries.
Then, if you make some of the topics sticky, you'll impose a fake popularity, with time you'll lock the section in its own fake world, like it happens in a search bubble. Nobody wants to see a section with tens of sticky topics that never goes away. That gets old fast.
Maybe keep the GW121 or any other instruments you sell sticky, and that's it. Let the rest be effervescent.
If it's just the engineer's urge to keep everything well classified and categorized, well, we must resist that OCD.
If it's some other plan than "easy to find", then go ahead and see how it goes.
IMO you found the winning recipe already, this forum is great as it is, thank you for keeping it running!
I think it doesn't need any "better experience", any "for your own good" everybody hate so much these days. It's at its peak. Therefore I think no matter what, it won't grow much from now on. Quite contrary given the current trend, because it looks like the western world is going backwards. It's not the forum, it's the world.