Ok, so these two just came up in a conversation on Tandem. Having a look around the net and the forums, while also asking my friend who I’d been talking to, I think I finally have a pretty solid grasp of the use of ～みたい
@Syphus & @KanjiNovice gave pretty good explanations here https://community.wanikani.com/t/読みたい-and-読んでみたい-whats-the-difference/11643?u
The thing is I haven’t been able to find anything about the apparent usage of ～したい and where it is used instead?
So explain away 
したい is just the “want to” form of する, not something you stick on other things (except nouns that can become する verbs, like always). It’s like 読みたい in that linked post.
Ok, so where ～みたい is added onto a te form verb to form ‘I want to try’, ～したい is added onto a noun turned verb like 勉強する to turn it into a verb? Does it not have any extra connotation of wanting to ‘try’, like the other? Or is it simply just to want to do, similar to 食べたい & よみたい?
～たい is “want to”, when added to the masu-stem of a verb
Whether that is する > したい or みる > みたい
In the case of みたい, when you put it after another verb it has the function of being like “want to try and see”, since it’s from みる after all.
That’s really no different from any other two verbs back to back, with the first one in て form.
する attaching to nouns with たい is really a completely different subject. It has no implication of “trying” because it’s just the ～たい (want to) form.
If you want to say “try” to do a する verb, it’d be like 勉強してみたい.
Ok so there isn’t any extra meaning, the way my language partner put it it sounded like there might’v been.
Thanks for your help
Did they say that てしたい was a thing?
Haha, I have just looked back on it, and realised that they had expressed that みたい was not the only way to say ‘to want’, and that sometimes you use したい. The way it was said confused me. But now I think I understand what they meant. So, no I don’t think that’s what they said in the end. But thanks again for helping to clear that up.
～てみる means “try to do ~”.
Literally, the meaning is something like “do ~ and see” - it means “try” in the same sense as English would use “and see” as well, for example “taste this and see what it’s like” = “try it out”
The other way to say “try” in Japanese is ～ようとする (where ～よう represents the volitional form of the verb), though it’s got a slightly different meaning to ～てみる.
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