For most of his career as a retailer his stuff was just repackaged off the shelf stuff that could be bought elsewhere. He later started doing a bit of R&D and introduced some pretty good products. He had a guy (Paul Horowitz?) that reworked his meters so that they were more full spectrum, his tripods were off the shelf, his tripod heads were Bogen 4047, etc. Good gear and all tested by him before it got into his store, but nothing special. Then read his write ups and Oh BOY!
BTW my only experience of him on the phone is second hand. A guy I sold a view camera to, and a bunch of darkroom stuff, was having issues and called Fred. Picker was pretty rough with him, he was using Kodak Indicator Stop Bath instead of Kodak 28% Acetic Acid and Picker gave him a pretty good chewing out. I got the story from my customer, not the horse's mouth but there it is. The issue might have been pinholes in negatives, this was in 1975 so my recollection is not complete. Could it have been the stop bath? Maybe. But if both were mixed to spec, they would have had the same strength.