Please come back. I was hoping you could help me clarify and sort through some of my thoughts.
Oh yeah, with this issue, I also think they kinda do it on purpose to make convince you that you need to use their whole line since the rest of the products should bring the pH back down. Either way, I can't buy stuff like that. My scalp would pack up and leave
My hair has gotten a taste for Kenra and Jocio, there is no going back now
To me, its not much of a pH issue as it is an ingredient compatability issue for staying within the line. The pHs of most of these daily products does not vary all that much. You'll always have shampoos being more basic/alkaline than conditioners no matter where you go. But make sure you stay on them for those formula pHs. Some of those people do NOT like giving out information to us unlicensed folk.
I had to get ugly with Avlon 'nem and they gave me the number to someone at corporate!
Don't let them run you off, b/c they will try it. Like it's classified or something!
I was just going to say on the main difference between coarse hair and fine hair shampoos is not one of pH, but just a general formula difference ingredient wise. Coarser shampoos tend to have more oils and emollients for softenting the cuticle, where fine hair shampoos tend to focus on reinforcing the cuticles w/ light proteins (volumizing).
All shampoos are slightly more basic than conditioners just by nature, but most of the cuticle lifting we're talking about here is going to come from the water being introduced to the hair, not from the pH of the shampoo product. Most of our shampoos you'll find will be in the normalizing range, and there really isn't much variation in pH across daily shampoo formulas- unless you're dealing with a specific type of 'treatment' shampoo.
Shampoos are surface acting products, and they use anionic surfactants to lift debris from the cuticle scales/surface. They may contain ingredients that deposit along the cuticle, but they really don't assist in lifting/loosening cuticles. Their job is to simply bind to and remove water insoluable substances from the outer layers of hair. Water is somehting that most hair, even the most non porous hair can incorporate into the cortex. Everything else is surface acting (working on the outer cuticle layers). That's why most treatements have to be repeated over and over. Coarser hair can take the deposition of heavy material on the cuticle much easier than fine hair- which feels limp and dry if it's overloaded with product. If a coarser haired person were to use products formulated for fine hair, they wouldn't feel anything b/c those products don't have the "deposition" power that creamier, oiler coarse formulas tend to have. It's not that pH is "letting more things in." Also, since 70% of us are relaxed in the first place, we're already deep in the porous range just by that fact alone. Most of our products are formulated to flatten and repair cuticle, not lift it.
They do assume all of our hair is coarser and compared to the formulas made for Becky and Kimmy, it is.
Their remedy for this, and our porosity, is not to increase the pH of our poos, but to add more oils/emollients (but mostly oils) to our "moisturizing" formulas. One size fits all. KeraCare is a perfect example of this trend. For those of us with fine hair, that combo of oils and heavy emollients leaves us feeling parched, while our thicker stranded comrades feel conditioned and nourished.
If you notice, in product lines that are generally meant for Caucasian folk, we usually are instructed to choose the formula for "color treated/damaged hair." This is because the pH of these "color safe" lines is even lower and contain the deposition material we need for our pliability. I know these ramblings are probably all over the place, but I said all of that to say I do think that the role of pH in those formulas is not as important as the formula make up. You'll find that the pH varies very little, and errs on the lower (normalizing) side generally.
The pH of hair and scalp is 4.5-5.5. So if your shampoo says that it is "pH-balanced", this usually means that the shampoo fits in the same range as the hair and scalp, which is a good thing 
I've got to get myself back accustomed to the cool water, brrrrr!!!
