Originally Posted by: JeffS65For the longest time, I played D'Addario XL '09's. i never found them to be lacking in tone. I could always dial up my chunky tone with them. They were also more useful on my shredhead days too.However, I'm less shred oriented and have been using .10's (I have yet to reacquire an acoustic).

I recently tried my first D'Addario Lights on my acoustic and love the bluesy sound they give. I wouldn't say heavier strings are richer per se, mine are quite warm. The advantage to heavier strings is they allow for tunings you can't really achieve on lights (drop C and B come to mind), and they are technically louder. But I'm loud enough on my acoustic I don't see the need. But if you drop the tuning to a C or B the tension decreases and they become a lot easier to play.

Still, I can't play heavier strings. I've picked up many guitars that have heavy strings and been shocked at the unplayability of them (at least to me). I couldn't get a nice sound out of them when fingerpicking. If I were playing powerchords on the acoustic they'd sound nice, but trying to pull of Layla was an utter disaster (more so than usual :P).

To me, they're much stiffer, and I can't see how that'd be fun to play. I do play electric a lot more, so I'm spoiled, but even on my electric I prefer lighter strings.

Again, I'm not an expert in the least, but I'm a big fan of lights.

Since we're on the subject of strings, how often should they be replaced? Everyone's telling me once a month, but I honestly don't notice a performance drop that early, nor do they blacked. Is once every three months okay?