imagine if a time machine swapped him and coleman hawkins, you'd be going on about a different guy.
Possibly not. I've played guitar for over 20 years and therefore understand the techniques used in guitar playing better than those associated with any other instrument; yet I could not name any one player that I think stands head and shoulders above all others.
I believe that every pop, jazz and classical musician or composer uses a finite set of phrases and sounds, and that there always comes a point -- particularly once you have internalised that person's "vocabulary" -- where you can stand at a distance and regard the whole thing as waves of clichés lapping on your aural shores; it invariably opens a fissure in the illusion.
With Coltrane, however, that doesn't happen to me. Whatever it is he was doing (I'm certainly not talking about "mere" technical proficiency, and not about composition in the normal sense), he was so much better at it than every other saxophone player that their playing, and the silliness described above, sticks out like a sore thumb. This is a rather unfortunate state of affairs for saxophone players. AFAICS, there is or was no "Coltrane" guitarist (for example), so guitarists can go on noodling without anyone ever telling them, "Yes, ok, but I know Coltrane, and your NOT HIM!"