String Guages

[Veenture]

I also find that higher frets tend to distort the note with light gauge strings just with playing pressure...

How true! This is the main reason why I dislike jumbo- or even medium jumbo frets. In the nineties I once bought a Standard American Strat which had medium jumbo frets. After a while I decided to finally file them down but that didn't turn out to be quite satisfactory either because the frets were now too wide, giving rise to intonation issues. I finally sold the guitar off. Vintage frets for me all the way (on my Fenders). I use guage 10/46 on all my guitars.

[101Volts]

Recently, I tried a set of D'addario 12-54s and they didn't give the early B-52's tone; The unwound strings didn't have that chime that I love, They were too tight! The wound strings sounded OK but even they didn't have that raw and wild tone as heard in "Lava". The next day I switched to a new set of 10s and I'm happy with my Ventures II G3 again.

On another note, I think I prefer a set of 10-52s or 10-54s on my Riff ES-335 Copy. Different guitars call for different string gauges.

Austin

[101Volts]

I have what I think is an old set of 9s on my Ventures II now. I like them more than the 10s, They have tone like a banjo.

Austin