I'm lucky to have a mate, Max, who used to have his own music shop, and was then a Fender demonstrator until a car accident (someone else running a red light at 70mph) almost killed him and smashed him up pretty bad, stopping him from playing for a long while. After that he became a studio acoustics expert, plus some pro-level mixing (he worked on most of the Playststion Guitar Hero stuff) and is a part-owner of (but no longer directly involved in) a small studio in Oxford.

So there's very little he doesn't know from experience or hasn't been taught by manufacturers, and he's always telling me things (like some of the above). Unfortunately he's just had to get a job outside the music industry because no-one pays their bills any more and he needs to pay the rent. He's recovering from a 2nd operation to cure some carpal tunnel issues with his wrists, and is about 50% of the way to getting full use of his left hand again. Unfortunately he is a fearsome shredder and I'm not a great fan of constant 200mph notes. It's very difficult to get him to slow down at all and put some emotion and feel into his playing.