I have, and my experience is that headsets installed on improperly faced head tubes may cause the bearings to migrate to one side of the race, depending on how perpendicular the upper and lower races are. This can lead to the sensation of drag, or binding, when turning the bars. This phenomenon can get seriously compounded if the fork crown race is also improperly seated. Then you have alignment problems between the races that vary with the rotation of the fork!

I had this happen to on a bike on which I didn't bother having the head tube re-faced after painting. I was tearing my hair out figuring out why the headset was stiffer when turning it one way. I tried different numbers of loose balls (less made it worse). Using caged balls reduced the binding slightly. This was one incident, but I do believe there is something to it. It may not pertain to "low end", per se, but definitely low-end headset installations. I now make sure that the head tube is re-faced by an LBS any time I have a frame painted or PC'd. I haven't had the problem occur since then.

On the other hand, indexing is a phenomenon that can definitely occur with worn or low-end headsets, that swapping to loose balls can rectify. But that's a separate issue altogether, and that's caused by worn or pitted races. Maybe that's what Justin was referring to? I define binding and indexing as distinct, and symptoms of two different problems.