Is gear important ... well here is a quick stat which may make you think about it.

If you looked at every horse which had a gear change in the last 2 months (i only have records going back this far for gear) you would have got :

2966 selections
unitab return of 2617 (loss of about 12%)
betfair return of 3229 - 5321 (depending on prices obtained).

Even at the lowest prices obtained you would have made a profit of 8% before commission.

A profit shows by just taking horses which show a change in gear. No other form analysis done. Thats a telling statistic in my opinion. And I haven't even looked into which gear works better. Or whether first time use is better.