Yes, I hit with heavy top-spin, but when you look at the little rackets I played with, the Maxply Dunlop, you had to hit the very centre all the time. I had my share of miss-hits.
Nylon string is still a new love and I'm not tired of it yet.
It all comes down to the density of the wood. Every guitar's different.
My philosophy is the thicker the wood the thicker the sound, the bigger the string the bigger the sound. My smallest string is a 14 gauge.
It's a balance between getting the right string gauge that's thick enough where it sound good, and not rubber bands - but not too thick where your hands start to get real tired.
I experimented a bunch with Ernie Ball in getting the strings to not flop around too much, but at the same time not to be too thick to where you're playing telephone cables.
Chromamatic' is actually about changing the strings on my guitar and tuning my guitar.
You can play slide on any guitar, but to be serious about it you have a tough set of strings, otherwise you don't get the full attack - you can't dig in.
I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk.
I destroyed a lot of guitars trying to get them to do what I wanted, but I learned something from every guitar I tore apart, and discovered even more things. Things like if the string is not straight from the bridge saddle to the nut, you're going to have friction.
I'll always leave the same set of strings on my guitars when I'm recording. If I break one I'll just replace it instead of putting on a whole new set of strings.
You can batter your guitar, and it won't distort too much, which is important for me because I play with my hands a lot - I don't really play with picks.
If you put heavy, regular classic guitar strings on a baritone ukulele, it gets pretty low. It has a really nice, low, warm feel to it.
My whammy system is set up so I can yank the bar up as well as do dive-bombs with it. This means that if I accidentally push down on the bridge with my palm, my strings go sharp and sound out of tune. I make sure this never happens by never resting my hand on the bridge when muting. I always do my muting just in front of the bridge.
