Guitar Strings

I forgot how important fresh guitar strings are to consistent tone. I have about a dozen guitars at any given period of time. And for the last few weeks I've been playing, and adjusting the guitar I built for the guitar giveaway exclusivity. My regular guitar is a blue bodied strat shown in some of the pages of this web site.

After reluctantly shipping out the red guitar giveaway guitar, I picked up the blue bodied strat, tuned it, and started playing. It sounded awful. I checked the strings and they looked fine. There was no pitting or rust that sometimes occurs, especially in the summer humid months. I began to think I got used to the Custom shop, Texas Special pickups in the giveaway guitar. I cleaned the strings, and adjusted the pickup height, with no positive results.

After a brief few minutes of depression I decided to replace the perfectly fine looking strings, with a fresh set. I figured this was a much cheaper try at a fix than replacing pickups.

I opened up a fresh pack of D'Addario 125 strings, cut the old strings off my strat clone, and put the new wire on. To my amazement, and delight, the guitar sounded 300 percent better. It sounded much brighter, fresher, crisper, sharper, and any other word ending in "er".

I realize that to many seasoned players this may not be news, but if your guitar is sounding dull, try a new set of strings before anything else. You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

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