i love my ebg808TE. i've been playing since 1972 and i started off with the lightest ernie ball gauge electric guitar strings on a framus texan (ernie ball apparently came up withe idea of different gauges for differences styles) and i've used all sorts since, d'addario were my favs until i bought a martin, then i used martin pretty much exclusively (i've had about60 guitars since 2013) but at the moment the six guitars i "keep" have different makes on all of them - when you're buying a guitar try as many as you can cos one will jump out at you sooner or later, and same with strings, try as many types, and gauges, as you can until you find the one that suits you. 12-54 is great if you have strong hands, i have little girlie hands so i compromise with 11-52, i used to use 10-48 at one point, but now i find them a bit "jangly" but 12's are too much. i have some videos of my maton on my channel.