7-strings: Give your two cents!

[RandomHero]

I've heard tons of opinions and thoughts on 7-string guitars. I'm a player myself and am still struggling with incorperating that 7th string, doing a couple alternate tunings and the like to make it work as logically and fluidly as the top 6 in standard.

So what do you all think? Vote, but don't stop there!

[quarry]

I'd like to try a 5 string guitar...

[gumbo]

And all this time I thought that avatar was a Photoshop stutter.........:-)

[dunkelfalke]

quarry said:

I'd like to try a 5 string guitar...

*sign*

[UnklMickey]

i'm gonna guess that learning a 7 would be easiest from the start. rather than learning it after learning a 6.

whether or not that's true, i voted for "i get lost on 6".

i think anyone who can play better on 7, certainly should go for it.

i doubt i'll ever do one justice.

not to muddy up the thread or anything, but, for those who do play a 7,

is it easy to play a 6?, or does it feel terribly foreign after you're used to 7?

gumbo said:

And all this time I thought that avatar was a Photoshop stutter.........:-)

first time i saw it was late, late, at night...........i thought it was my eyes that stuttered

[wolf]

I voted for 6. I guess I'm old and set in my ways. Besides, to make room for that seventh string wouldn't that require pickups that could span that extra distance? Wouldn't this make my DiMarzio X2N collection obsolete?

[ux4484]

Thrashing on 6 is enough of a chore for me, especially when I started with 4!

For a long time, I really, REALLY wanted a 12 string RIC, and then a bud lent his to me for a week

Six is more than enough for me.

[JohnH]

Id say its an interesting idea, but Ive never seen one close up. Some extra bass range would be useful sometimes, even if just a low D, with the other 6 tuned as normal. RH, how do you tune yours?

John

[RandomHero]

unklmickey said:

not to muddy up the thread or anything, but, for those who do play a 7,

is it easy to play a 6?, or does it feel terribly foreign after you're used to 7?

I don't know if this holds true for everyone, but it's actually -easier- for me to play a six now. It's like going from shredding on a classical neck to an Ibanez Wizard. Having to put the extra mental effort into keeping track of where you are on 7 strings makes 6 seem almost too easy... of course that doesn't make my tremolo picking or hammerons any better, I can just get around the neck without thinking about it so much.

wolf said:

Besides, to make room for that seventh string wouldn't that require pickups that could span that extra distance? Wouldn't this make my DiMarzio X2N collection obsolete?

If you like DiMarzios to begin with, then you're in luck. IMHO, DiMarzio makes some of the best-sounding 7-string pups out there. My guitar is set up with their Blaze series, and while they don't have a 7-string version of their X2N yet, it's such a popular pickup that it's only a matter of time... the Blaze bridge is modeled from a Steve's Special and the neck from a Breed, I believe.

johnh said:

RH, how do you tune yours?

Right now I'm going low to high BEADGBe. With that same perfect fourth interval between the heaviest two strings, it's easiest to continue scales on down into the bass range. Barre chords are a lot easier though, in AEADGBe, since with any chord normally including the top five strings, you're fattening it by an octave lower and a perfect fifth along the way. Of course it's great for chugging on the top three since it's reminiscent of dropped-D, but I had been tuning that way for a while and returned to BEADGBe to break myself out of a rut.

[vonFrenchie]

I prefer the 41 string guitar. I dadle on it nothin big.