Technique and tone

[Carey]

Sound like you're on the right track with the normal tension strings.
One exercise that helped my barre quite a bit is from Iznaola's book:
simply (and at first gently!) doing hammer-ons with the barre finger,
forgetting about the other fingers at first, going up and back down
the neck. Easy does it.. really helps me, at least.

[MC5C]

With respect to expensive guitars vs cheaper guitars and playability - there can be no difference at all. I, and most other luthiers, can make a guitar with the basics intact play any way you want it to, with adjustments, fret dressing, etc. What an expensive guitar brings to the table isn't ease of playing particularly, but volume, clarity, balance, tone and technique reward. Not ease of barre chords at first fret, so much.

[TBman]

When I took my Cordoba C5 out of the box, and tuned it up, the relief was not to my liking. So I did maybe a half turn in total to take out relief and now its fine. I've "set up" many of my steel strings and my starting point is always to take the relief down to almost zero, then adjust the nut if needed and lastly the saddle. All of this assumes that the saddle has a lot showing though.

[jonnymosco]

Originally Posted by Don W

Thanks for this...I have ordered some normal tension strings. I have been using liquid gel nails done at the nail salon for years for my steel string playing and they are great. I am thinking these are not the best for nylon.I may have to sacifice some tone here as my main playing is finger style on my steel string Larrivee.

I have gel nails, the thicker the better for good tone (and longevity) - the tone is also in the buffing, not just filing. The edge that has contact with the string must have a mirror-like sheen to glide across the string. This makes a world of difference whatever the string, steel or nylon. Shape advice can be found in Pumping Nylon.

Good luck and I hope your barré is sorted, Pumping Nylon will help here too - there are some videos on my YT channel which may also help.

Jonny