Adding terpenes has two effects.
Taste and to make the oil flow in the tank.
What about the third "effect" namely, effects. IMLE, terpenes modify cannabis' effects significantly.
The terps are way overpriced and the fact that they are derived from cannabis means f**k all. You can get great terp blends for half the price and even those are way overpriced. Using terps derived from cannabis is a senseless waste of good bud, a product designed for superstitious, gullible people with no knowledge of chemistry or pharmacology. The only thing that matters about terps is their purity.
Watch a video on short-path fractional distillation of cannabis concentrates. Terpenes come off in the first fraction, cannabinoids in the next. Both are recovered, not wasted. You'll also see that a much smaller volume of terpenes is produced, which explains the cost of cannabis-derived terpenes somewhat.
As a graduate of MIT with five year-long courses in chemistry, I respectfully disagree. If the terpenes are pure, the source does not matter. Do you have information that I do not? Can you explain why terpenes distilled from an herb other than cannabis are inferior? Pure individual terpenes are quite inexpensive, it is just a matter of combining the correct ones in the correct proportions to recreate the terpene spectrum of a given strain.
Not doubting you, but degrees count for little in anonymous forums.
Theoretically, if terpenes are completely purified, it should be possible to mix dozens of them in various volumes to copy cannabis-derived terpene profiles - it's still impractical. You'd have to settle for only a few of the many terpenes in the plant. Also, nothing is ever completely pure. You'd need to be very careful of contaminants in petroleum-derived terpenes. No need to worry about this with cannabis-derived terpenes added back to decarbed concentrates in the ratios found in the plant.
Still, with care, this approach could produce decent results inexpensively. Judging by disappointment with purified terpenes expressed in numerous posts, it's easier said than done.
Believe me it’s hard for People who can recite pi to the 100th digit to understand that normal folk actually don’t go along with logic and we like what we like.
It's easy to underestimate our sensory perceptions. Remember when CDs first became available? Everyone explained how they must sound so much better than vinyl records, completely ignoring the evidence of our senses telling us they don't. Now we know that the audiophiles were correct all along.