Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum. And new to PRS guitars. I've wanted one for a long time and now I have an SE 24 standard. Had it for a week. Great instrument. Love it.
I've played acoustic most of my life, just "messed around" with electric. Now I'm getting' serious!
Over the years, I'd always been advised that anything less than 10 ga strings were useless as far as tone and staying in tune were concerned and that no one used 9s for any serious playing, certainly never for professional playing. So I always used 10s or 11s for my (not so diligent) attempts to play Les Paul or Strat type instruments.
So I found it surprising (and a relief to my fingers!) that PRS guitars come strung with 9s. I have to assume that PRS has good reasons to string them that way at the factory and that the reasons have nothing to do with the intent to "appeal to pimply-faced teens who need to bend every note two and a half tones."
However, I've now gone through 4 string changes in the last week because I keep breaking my high E string. It's due to bad (horrible) technique on my part, as I tend to mash down more than push laterally and the string breaks under my middle finger, one fret down from the fretted note (ring finger). It's happened to me with many different guitars so it's not a problem with the instrument.
I'm unlearning that bad habit and I've had the same set on the guitar 3 days now and the E string is surviving! (I'm using D'Addarrio. I've always liked them. I assume that's what came from the factory as the balls were all color coded.) I know that I can restring with whatever gauge I want (wonder how much I'll have to adjust intonation, string height, etc?) but I'm sticking with 9s for now.
I assume PRS is advocating for such light gauge. They wouldn't string them that way if 9s in an way detracted from the guitar's performance. I understand players such as Santana use very light gauge with no problem.
I'd like to know how many of you actually gig with 9s. I would think that the chance of 9s breaking during a performance is too high to risk it. No?
Rich