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HOLY SHMOLEY!!!  I've got a new favorite Chordian song (regrets and apologies to my former favorite song songwriters James, Last Rebel, and Selso).  I can SOOOOOOOOO relate to this song, and you had the extreme good sense not to use any "B" chords in it!

Good lyrics, the meter's right on the money, I haven't played the chord progression but I can just about hear it in my head.  Just love it.  Love it, love it, love it, love it, ad infinitum. 

- Zurf

What do you consider expensive?  I can get just about any D'Addorio strings in a single set for about $7 (American) at the local shop.  $7 doesn't sound too expensive for a risk on whether the strings will make your guitar sound better to me, but I can see how it would to someone else. 

Consider string material, what you want your guitar to sound like (brash or mellow, loud or not so loud, etc.), and what you can afford to spend.  How you want your guitar to sound will make a difference of whether to buy nickle wound strings, bronze phosphur, silk & steel, etc. 

However, to answer your initial question, new strings will almost certainly make your guitar sound DIFFERENT.  Whether or not the difference is a HELP is entirely a matter of your personal taste.  Strings don't last forever, so if they're getting old just about anything will be an improvement in the guitar's sound.  Putting lighter strings on may put less stress on the neck and allow a lower action, but then again maybe not.  Depends on how your guitar is built.

- Zurf

HEY!!  He had me out in under 45 minutes, and that's a fact.  He actually tried the last two and a half minutes.  Woke me up, too, with all the noise.

- Zurf

Speak for yourself junior.  I enjoy Doc's threads.

I had a bicycle racing coach named Jake Speed. 

- Zurf

Jerome,

I am terribly saddened to hear of your loss.  What an awful blow!  So sudden.  Please speak up if there's anything we can do.  There's no advice that sounds useful at times like this, so action takes its place.  From three thousand miles away, the only action I can think of is prayer - and so I'll do that without your asking.  If there is anything I can do from this distance, all you need do is ask.

- Zurf

Same answer as your last one - MacArthur Park.  Who puts a cake outside in the first place to be able to leave it out in the rain?

It hasn't affected me much as an American citizen.  The thing that has affected me the most is that corn subsidies have increased to get more corn for fashioning into biofuel, which isn't being used near as much as the government would like (and sawgrass is a better source of bio sugars to make ethanol anyway).  The reason this has affected me is that many of the Pacific Northwest farmers have converted their hops fields to corn fields to get the subsidy and the shortage of hops has driving the price of quality beer through the roof.  It's cheaper to drink bourbon, which is made from corn (but has also increased in price substantially because the cheap corn is being made into biofuel). 

The only European thing that I regularly kept on hand was 18 year aged Glenfiddich or Glenlivet, but it has gotten far too expensive.  The price has gone up close to 30% in the past year.  I have discovered a 12 year aged American bourbon that is quite reasonable in price and is tasty, though surely not AS tasty.  However, I can get 1.75L of the bourbon for roughly $28, but 1L of Glenfiddich or Glenlivet is closer to $43.  For almost 1/4 the price, I will have to find the strength to suffer through until the dollar is strong against the Euro again and Scotch is once again affordable. 

And as long as we're passing out hugs, Old Doll and Doc are both welcome to one.  And I'll toss in a peck on the cheek to Old Doll, too.  But I'm leaving Doc out on the cheek peckery - me not being European and all. 

- Zurf

I am wondering whether my current shoulder woes have been exacerbated by guitar playing.  They are surely not CAUSED by guitar playing as it has been a lifetime of abuse to get me to this situation.  Nevertheless, when I go to buy my next guitar, it will likely be an orchestra or parlor sized body rather than a dreadnaught.

As far as fingers, I did a number on the ring finger of my left hand once bad enough that I couldn't use it to push a string for six months.  I wasn't playing guitar then, but was playing bass in a band.  I just used other fingers to fret whatever I'd have fretted with the ring finger.  It was an odd learning curve but worked out to give me more options when playing than I had before.  For instance, I would often fret an E by using the second fret of the D string, but began to fret the seventh fret of the A string instead.  I learned a lot about my fretboard, which is always useful.

Now, that bad break on that finger is coming back to haunt me because it doesn't bend backwards to allow me to fret a B chord, I wind up getting the high E as well as the other three strings I'm supposed to get, which sounds simply awful.  If I could figure out how to just MUTE the high E rather than fret it, I'd be there.

- Zurf

It's the first syllable of my last name.  Most of my friends call me "D" or "Big D", which were both taken on this forum when I registered.  Zurf is the next most common nickname used for me.

- Zurf

MacArthur Park is set to the tune of a Rachmaninoff piano piece. 

- Zurf

That's cool that you noticed that about yourself.  The only thing I can recommend is to practice doing it.  Try doing some standard strumming pattern with a metronome and then do your chord changes differently.  For a while strum a simple 1, 2, 3, 4 all down strokes like your very first day with a guitar.  Keep that strum going and then change chords once per measure (after the 4) and then for a while on each beat (after each number).  Then maybe change your strumming to straight eights (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &) alternating down and up, change chords at each measure and each beat again (this time the beat is after the &). 

I don't know whether this will work or not, but in my efforts of teaching myself, it's seemed to work well to just force myself to do a lot of what I don't do well.  Except B chords, which I avoid because I don't like them. 

- Zurf