Well, I’ve been messing about on flute for a little over a year now and neglecting my fiddle except for flurries of practice before sessions, and I haven’t gotten around to restringing it in quite a while. But my hand was forced when the D and E blew out, so tonight I put on a new set of Tonicas (with the Evah Pirazzi gold-plated E I had them add to the order so I’d break into the free shipping range). Whoa! I’d forgotten what an excellent means of instant gratification a string change can be. As a teacher told me, you don’t realize how bad your old strings have gotten until you put the new ones on. And that E is very mellow, well worth the three or four bucks…
Absolutely! But did you ever notice, how GOOD old strings can sound, UNTIL you change them? 
That’s good news about the gold E-I like that idea, and have wondered about them, but never did try one. Thanks for that suggestion!