The thing to keep in mind is that Ray will not charge $25 in shipping for every string. If you tell him what you want and have him give you a combined shipping quote ... it will always be better than you'll get using the website directly. It seems that most orders max out on shipping and then it becomes more reasonable, esp. on larger orders. But buying one string, yeah, the shipping is lousy. But buy 10 strings and it'ls really not bad, esp. when you have him quote it for you.