An $11 salvation

[fazool]

I wanted a cheap second electric and landed on a Sterling CT50 (the discontinued model before they downgraded it to a CT30).

I tried one and greatly disliked it......tried a second one and fell in love with it. I've had this one now a couple months and am blown away by how good this is.

I recently changed the nut to a GraphTech XL perma-lubed black nut which I resized to OEM size/dimensions. However, when I did this I realized I was out of 10/46 Elixir strings, so I put a set of Ernie Ball 9's on it.

I played it and found myself so disillusioned I actually started to second guess myself and wonder if I made another mistake. I was wondering if the nut setup screwed things up. It sounded awful. I adjusted the pickups, tried everything. Then (forehead smack moment) I remembered I changed string gauge and type. I stopped at my favorite mom and pop local store over lunch and bought three sets of my preferred strings. Installed them last night and "all is right with the world". This thing is amazing.

I had a similar experience with a Taylor GS Mini - I changed string gauges and it became lifeless and disappointing.....when I changed back to the original gauge it came back to life.

Moral of the story: some guitars are *MUCH* more sensitive to (and dependent upon) optimum string matching.

It's not just a player preference - some guitars (and this is one) simply can't tolerate different strings. I've had Gibsons that didn't care what string I put on them- they always sounded right. This guitar is very, very finicky and is terrible with the wrong strings.

So I've realized it is extremely guitar dependent.

So for $11, I brought my cheap second guitar back to life.