Any 7 String electric guitar fans?

[s2y]

Originally Posted by arie

where did you hear this from?


buy used to experiment with. i paid $180 for a schecter 7 string. they can be found cheap because a lot of players give up on them.

A mid 80's guitar world, before Steve Vai and Ibanez were doing it.

The high A becomes an issue of scale length and tension. Most 25.5" scale .008 strings become prone to snap after being tuned past G and are higly nasal sounding.

[arie]

Originally Posted by s2y

A mid 80's guitar world, before Steve Vai and Ibanez were doing it.

The high A becomes an issue of scale length and tension. Most 25.5" scale .008 strings become prone to snap after being tuned past G and are higly nasal sounding.

ok. electric guitars only though. acoustic 7's are quite old.

personally i wouldn't want to do this myself but you can use russian tuning (open g maj) if you really need a high string.

[s2y]

Originally Posted by arie

ok. electric guitars only though. acoustic 7's are quite old.

personally i wouldn't want to do this myself but you can use russian tuning (open g maj) if you really need a high string.

Archtop 7s were practically forgotten by guitar mags. It was a somwhat rare thing to see people playing them in the magazines and I still haven't seen many authentic archtops in local guitar stores.

Lenny Breau had the occasional blurb about his high strung classical 7 with fishing string.

[TenHairlessCats]

I've never owned an electric. Would it be a bad idea to buy a 7 string for a first electric guitar?

[arie]

Originally Posted by TenHairlessCats

I've never owned an electric. Would it be a bad idea to buy a 7 string for a first electric guitar?

refraining from putting a "good" or "bad" judgement on it, i would say that it probably isn't a typical first guitar purchase but everybody is different. who knows? you might find your new soul mate instrument.

go try some out at the store if they interest you.

[Dr_H]

It may be a little late to flog new life into this old thread, but what the heck?

A little surprised that the only 7-string thread I could find in the acoustic guitar forum has to do with electric guitar but I see that some other acoustic players didn't take that as an excuse to stay away.

Been playing 6- and 12-string in all manner of configurations and styles for many, many moons now, but I jsut acquired my first 7-string a couple of months back. Now, I suddenly have three of them.

First one was a cheap "Russian gypsy guitar" I got from the Ukraine. Actually, a reasonably good instrument for the money -- I paid more for shipping that for the guitar. The Russian guitar is traditionally tuned differently, but I started out playing it in standard western tuning, with a low B on the 7th string. I got hooked on 7-strings pretty quickly, and went out and got a decent quality 7-string classical instrument, which I love. Then, very recently, I had an opportunity to get an authentic Soviet-era Russian guitar, and decided to learn that in traditional tuning (D-G-B-D-G-B-D, low to high).

I play a lot of different styles, from classical to punk. I found using 7-strings for classical pieces to be pretty simple and straightforward. Some styles, however (notably ragtime) were a bit more of a challenge, since I do resort to "thumb-wrap" bass at times, so I needed to seriously rethink the fingerings in some pieces. I can actually still get my thumb up on the low B string (for some chords), but reaching over to the low E is asking a bit much.

The first big thing I noticed (right after I noticed that the neck was 25% wider...) was the resonance. Having that low B on there makes a difference, even when you're not playing on it directly -- and I like the difference. The guitar sounds more "present" even in a large space.

All this 7-string fever has launched me on a couple of side projects: one is trying to find method books and/or music for the Russian gypsy guitar, most of which, apparently, was published in the old USSR, and still hasn't made it out.

The other is: I find the action on the first few frets of the classical instrument a tad low, and decided to make a new bone nut for it and raise things up a bit. This is a job I've done before, but never on a 7-string. Where in the world do you get nut-blanks big enough for this instrument? Typical classical nut blanks are ~50-52mm, tops (aobut 2"), but this beast requires something between 60-65mm (nearly 2-1/2"). Seems like I may have to go out and shoot my own buffalo for this one...

Anyway, that's my 2, er... my 7¢.

[s2y]

I have an acoustic, electric, archtop, and soon to be a nylon 7. The topic of 7 string acoustic is more than a little rare. I don't think I've ever heard another acoustic 7, other than my own.