It's very much perceptible, the weird thing is the problems I have in gears where one wouldn't expect any. For instance, having stripped and serviced my x-rf5 for the umpteenth time, swapped some internals from a spare, improved it's overall performance by paying attention to subtleties of adjustment, I find there's some grindiness in 3rd gear. I could live with it if it were just the extreme gears that weren't up to par.