Bought a nocaster a couple of years ago it’s awesome. It would be the last one to go, my favourite guitar and I really don’t like telecasters.
Bought some different stings (Elixr optiweb things) and strayed away from my normal slinkys.
The guitar is suddenly awful, plays awful, sounds awful, horrible. Restringing very shortly.
That started me thinking, how many times over the years have I put the guitar back in a shop, not realising with different stings it could be a whole different story. Funny it has taken me this long to see the light!
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It would make trying them out an expensive, wasteful pastime.
I think I hit the mix of a bright guitar with bright strings, it was like somebody had turned every treble knob to 11
if they offered to do it for me I would smell a rat or lemon!
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Even if I was offered a load of them to use for free I would say Thanks but No Thanks.
They suck on acoustics though.
Have a couple of sets but not used them yet :-(
I think they're great.
This is why I actually don't really enjoy trying guitars in shops, or at least why I feel it's not necessarily going to leave me more clued up as to how a guitar will sound or even feel (you can certainly ascertain stuff like neck shape, fit & finish, ergonomics, etc).
The latter is probably the worst for me. Case in point, went to try a few PRS SEs recently, all strung with old, draggy 9s. Same for any Fender US standard I've ever tried. Made it very hard to go "yeah, that's ace I'll buy it right now!". Obviously it's very understandable for cheaper (say sub-£1k) guitars, they're not going to go through the hassle of setting it up in a different gauge from the factory.