Funny, my experience seems to be the reverse of most folks.. Bitd, I had nine effective gears. The only one I can say for sure I never used was small/small. Large/large meant not having to drop to the small ring (anethema in my teeny rigid racer's mind). Who couldn't get up hills in a 52-21? It didn't make grinding sounds, perhaps because it got used relatively often,
also the Ron Cooper rear triangle was famously rigid. I imagine that I used the small ring, living as I did at the top of a 500 climb in southern VT, and doing lots of hilly training and racing, but I can't say for sure.
Now, I have so many gears on some of my bikes, I don't know what to do with them all,*
so I just don't bother with the 2 extreme cross chained gears. Not because they're noisy, though they might be. I just have no reason to.
Eric
*my most modern is an 02 Lemond Zurich and it's got 20.