I have been playing guitar for 40+ years. I recently changed the strings on my new Fender American Strat Elite from the stock Fender 250L strings, to D'Addario EXL120-10P strings that I had around the house. Both sets of strings are are the same gauges (9-42), but the EXL120-10p strings are much more flexible to handle heavy tremolo use; they work great on my ESP with Floyd Rose. When I put the D'Addario strings on the Strat, they required major adjustments for intonation, especially the wound strings. I finally got intonation set on the Strat with the slinky D'Addario's, but I wanted to go back to the stock strings and intonation, so I set out in search of some Fender 250L's...
I stopped by Key Note Guitar to look for my Fender strings, but they have a very limited selection of everything, including strings, and no Fender strings. I told the store owner what I was looking for and how the string change had affected the intonation on the Strat, and she tried to convince me that string material had no affect on intonation. In other words "every .09 string will have the same intonation as every other .09 string regardless of material, brand, manufacturing method, etc." "They are all the same," as far as intonation, I was told. Um, no.
Guitar strings of different materials vary in flexibility, often dramatically, and strings of the same gauge with different flexibility require different adjustments for intonation. This is just a basic guitar fact, easily found on the internet if you are curious. So I was talking to a "guitar tech" who doesn't know that intonation for the same gauge string can vary by material, manufacturing method, brand, etc.
Moving to other subjects of discussion, we eventually got to buying instruments online... The owner told me how online music stores want their customers to return instruments so they can sell them again as new as many times as possible. That is just silly. If a store ships me an item (usually with free shipping), and I return the item for a refund, what good does that do them? They lose the cost of shipping at the very least, but they also have to pay people ship and restock the items, and they haven't sold anything to keep the distributor/wholesaler happy. So, what the heck sense does that make?? I had to mentally file this under "alternative facts" and move on. I bought a couple sets of strings to be nice, and, miracle of miracles, the GHS Nickel Rockers she sold me (9-42 as before) put my Strat back to normal intonation...just like they weren't supposed to, according to the owner.
In the end, I can't trust this store to provide reliable information, let alone reliable service or repair. I wanted to like it; I wanted to work with a small, local store; but I will go the extra distance to "the other store" from now on. Sad! read more
