As a keyboard player, it's much simpler to get a sound that I'm looking for by just pushing a button or playing the piano or my Rhodes. Guitar, bass and horn players seem to have a much more difficult time in finding their particular sound.

Sax and other horn players end up going through several mouth pieces before they find the best one for them. Sax players and other reed players end up having to go through reed after reed before a good one is found. Many of them spend hours and hours working and shaving down a reed to give it just that special sound they're looking for.

Being fairly new to guitar, I too seem to be having difficulty in finding my particular sound. I find that there are hundreds of guitar strings out there. Some are for electric guitars while others are for acoustic etc. There seems to be a string even for the type of music you play. Most of them are for rockers which give the sound a lot of bite to it. There are only a handful of strings for jazz players. Jazz players need strings that won't squeak during play as most jazz guitarists do not use any electronics like rockers do and need a clean sound.

Jazz guitar strings can be extremely expensive especially if one has to continuously change them due to wear. When I was playing my classical guitar, I used some pretty expensive imported nylon strings as the cheaper strings wouldn't last me a week. I had to buy them by the case and it cost me some serious money. Now I seem to be having a similar problem with the strings I'm using for jazz. I use flat wound guitar strings where all but the first 2 are flat wound versus round wound. Round wound strings squeak as one slides the fingers across them. In jazz there is a lot of sliding fingers as one plays octaves (Wes Montgomery style).

To compensate I've been experimenting using a combination of flat wounds and nylon strings. It seems to work pretty good for me but with the guitar I'm using, the nylon strings sound a bit dead. Perhaps a bit too dead. I don't want the twangy sound which is associated with metal strings like on the first 2 high strings of the guitar. I'm looking for something in between. I suppose that I could just make the adjustment to the sound with E.Q. but there is only so much E.Q. can do. I can get the sound I'm looking for using some expensive strings but since I'm not playing on the road or doing gigs which might justify the cost, I'll just have to keep experimenting until I find the right solution.