The two-stone setup always looks like the budget version. A 1000 and an 8000, nothing in between, and you sit in a class or read forum posts where someone walks through their six-stone progression and feel like you've been cutting corners.
You haven't.
For the thing most of us do most of the time — touching up an edge that's already the right shape — a 1000 and an 8000 is not a compromise. It is the right answer.
Here's the part that changes how you think about it: at the pressure you use when honing a flat bevel, a coarse stone does not remove metal faster than a medium one. Researchers have measured this across the full grit range, Shapton 320 through Shapton 4000, at normal woodworking pressure. The removal rate is essentially flat. Coarser is not faster.
The only ways to actually remove steel faster are to shrink the contact area or push dramatically harder than anyone does when honing. A hollow grind does the first. Pressing so hard you'd lose the bevel does the second. A longer stone progression does neither. It gives you more stones.
The grit number on the box is also not what you think it is. A hard black Arkansas oilstone has finer effective particles than most stones labeled 4000. A diamond plate leaves a deeper damaged layer at the same nominal grit than silicon carbide does. The label tells you where the stone sits on a shelf. It doesn't tell you much about what it does to steel.
So the argument for a long progression falls apart at both ends. The intermediate stones aren't speeding up your maintenance honing. The grit numbers aren't the precision instrument the progression implies they are.
There is one situation where a middle stone earns its place: a tool that's genuinely dull. Not a tool that's lost its last polish after a session, but one that needs real material removed before the fine stone can reach the edge. When the 1000 has to do sustained bulk work first, an intermediate helps. That's what the third stone is for.
For maintenance — the touch-up before a glue-up, the iron that's had a hard afternoon but not been abused — the 1000 sets the edge and the 8000 finishes it. Nothing in the middle is doing quiet necessary work.
Buy the third stone when you need it. Don't buy it to stop feeling behind.