6-String vs. 7-String

[Torment Leaves Scars]

Gonna order a new custom guitar and I can't make up my mind between a 6 or 7-stringer.  I've never played a 7-stringer (I will obviously do this prior to making a decision) but are there any real advantages/disadvantages to going with more strings?  I play a lot of Metal, but I really don't tune lower than a "Drop D."  I know this whole "more strings" mantra is "in vogue" with this "new" crowd of "musicians," but would I really benefit from a 7-stringer for my style of playing (Thrash, Speed, Glam, etc.)?

What else can a 7-stringer offer me, besides just a higher/lower voicing?

 

[stratamania]

One other thing it could give you is an extended range at a particular neck position. So if you were 12th position for example, you could get to a B at the 12 fret on the lowest string equivalent to the B on the low E at the 7th fret.

Personally I don't use a 7 string but it might be something I might do at some point.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Extended range without transposing.

When I first got a 7 string about 13 years ago, I just familiarized myself with it by playing it as a 6 string only.  Otherwise I would have defaulted to the low B by my instinct for the low E.

Eventually, I started incorporating it into the arrangements of some of our songs, like doing a C or a D in the lower registers on say, the last verse/chorus, just to change it up.  What I found was that it was a great way to give your songs a weight that they hadn't had before.  Just that lil bit of extra range. 

Doing this, rather than just sitting in the lower range all the time, in my opinion makes the music, more musical, more interesting.

Before that, I had another guitar tuned down a whole step to DGCFAD, but when it came time to work out keyboard parts, it was a brain pain.

With the 7, you don't have to worry about it.  I sit down & work on stuff with the 7 in conjunction to the keyboards all the time.

Also, if you're into jazz, you can really get into some nice bassline activity. 
Ibanez, Schecter, and Samick all used to make some really nice 7 string semi-hollow bodied guitars.
Check this dude out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA8iznaPgKE

This Raines guitar is really nice too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF7E47A5xgA

Some acoustic 7 string stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=479JgbPF_kg

Some 7 string chords:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV4LjAtzVEs

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

What about the difference between a baritone and a 7-stringer?  Would the longer scale "make up" for the additional string?  I find it to be quite a challenge to play a 6-stringer as it is, so I'm a bit apprehensive to so step up to a 7-stringer.

I'd like to widen a range and do something "new," but I'm concerned the neck is going to be too wide, as my fingers are a bit short and stubby.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Baritone = longer tension to compensate for transposed tuning.

7 string is extended range, not just transposing range downward.

I think if you have an opportunity to check out some seven strings at Guitarget, then you might have a better idea about the feel and tactile response of a seven.  Play it like a sixer, ignoring the low b at first, just to familiarize yourself.

Not to say that their isn't a learning curve involved, but you can strategically plan your "learn" as I did.  Once you do, it's as second nature as playing a sixer.

 

[stubhead]

I really like them for the musical reasons, it's a lot easier to play "wide" chords that aren't just the same-sounding barre chords that everybody's always using. And it is sort of comical that just for the (short) history of them, they are strictly divided between big fat, usually very expensive, hollowbody jazz guitars and Satan-worshipping gothy chug-chug guys who need bats and spiders and skulls on their guitars to remind them of how dangerous they are... (there actually is a long tradition of the chord-melody jazz guitarists using them, but only one guitarist at a time).  :dontknow:

There's really nothing about them that couldn't also be helpful playing blues, or southern rock, just about anything. There have also been various classical guitarists using them, but again, it's like one at a time. :icon_scratch: However, I'm old enough and been playing enough that I started having problems with my hands, carpal tunnel and ulnar nerves etc. And it was real obvious that the seven-string guitars and maybe even more the five-string bass were exactly the wrong thing for me to be playing with that going on. And there's only one surefire cure for it - don't get old.

 

[stratamania]

What about Steve Vai, and Uli Jon Roth, who both use 7 strings without bats wings or being jazz cats...

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Regardless of the genre', they're useful for expanding your tonal pallete, pure and simple.

And regarding the Baritone, I play blues on my Bari-Tele almost exclusively.  It loves it too!

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

What about Steve Vai, and Uli Jon Roth, who both use 7 strings without bats wings or being jazz cats...

I thought Vai was still using a 6-stringer?  :icon_scratch:

 

[AutoBat]

What about Steve Vai, and Uli Jon Roth, who both use 7 strings without bats wings or being jazz cats...

I thought Vai was still using a 6-stringer?  :icon_scratch:

He occasionally uses a 7 string Jem.

 

[stratamania]

What about Steve Vai, and Uli Jon Roth, who both use 7 strings without bats wings or being jazz cats...

I thought Vai was still using a 6-stringer?  :icon_scratch:

Vai, still uses 6 strings but also 7 strings, he was one of the pioneers of it. Check out a video called Ibanez Seventh Heaven. A search on you tube may find it.

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

What about Steve Vai, and Uli Jon Roth, who both use 7 strings without bats wings or being jazz cats...

I thought Vai was still using a 6-stringer?  :icon_scratch:

Vai, still uses 6 strings but also 7 strings, he was one of the pioneers of it. Check out a video called Ibanez Seventh Heaven. A search on you tube may find it.

Oh, wow, I thought he was just using 6-stringers, but then again, I don't really listen to much Vai.

 

[stubhead]

They would be especially useful if you were writing music that needed to be in specific keys for the physical range of a singer. And what I mean by "wide" chords is just ones with intervals larger than a third in them. You can get fourths and fifths and even a few sixths* on adjacent strings, but: the easiest way into it is just to lay out a scale map (in your head or on paper, if your head won't do that yet) - Then find the fingerings up and down the neck for chords that lay on strings 1,3 and 5. And the same for chords strings 2, 4 and 6. And blooey (Waola?) you can see what that 7th string can do for you besides worship Satan - having the 3-5-7 string combination available gives you a full set of inversions within two octaves, within... 4 frets? 5 frets, something like that. An awful lot of the writing that Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani did when they were frying the minds of pentatonic blues twangers comes from the pitch combinations you get from this stuff.

*(This is pretty much a bad idea, as far as wear & tear goes. Worse than just having seven strings, for sure.)

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

They would be especially useful if you were writing music that needed to be in specific keys for the physical range of a singer. And what I mean by "wide" chords is just ones with intervals larger than a third in them. You can get fourths and fifths and even a few sixths* on adjacent strings, but: the easiest way into it is just to lay out a scale map (in your head or on paper, if your head won't do that yet) - Then find the fingerings up and down the neck for chords that lay on strings 1,3 and 5. And the same for chords strings 2, 4 and 6. And blooey (Waola?) you can see what that 7th string can do for you besides worship Satan - having the 3-5-7 string combination available gives you a full set of inversions within two octaves, within... 4 frets? 5 frets, something like that. An awful lot of the writing that Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani did when they were frying the minds of pentatonic blues twangers comes from the pitch combinations you get from this stuff.

*(This is pretty much a bad idea, as far as wear & tear goes. Worse than just having seven strings, for sure.)

Maybe it'll be beneficial to go with a 7-stringer.  If I don't like it, I'll just ignore the top string.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I think that once you have familiarized yourself with it over the course of a few months, you'll find all kinds of inspiration.

I've used my in the heavy prog rock stuff that I've done, but I've also dabbled in some country licks and I use it consistently on the church's worship team.

I'd actually like to build something similar to this sometime:
http://www.rondomusic.com/tc-725nat.html

 

[stratamania]

Stubhead, I get where you are going with wide chords, ones with spaced intervals on non adjacent strings and different inversions. Yes a 7 string would give more possibilities in the same position. Cool stuff.

Now I have Gas for a 7 again, and I saw a Universe in a sale with a few hundred knocked off. But batten down the hatches because financial sense just struck  :icon_jokercolor:

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

I think that once you have familiarized yourself with it over the course of a few months, you'll find all kinds of inspiration.

I've used my in the heavy prog rock stuff that I've done, but I've also dabbled in some country licks and I use it consistently on the church's worship team.

I'd actually like to build something similar to this sometime:
http://www.rondomusic.com/tc-725nat.html

How much thicker is the neck on a 7, I feel like I can barely get around a 6-stringer with my short fingers.  What about playing faster stuff like solos, or sweeps?  Would it be more difficult?

A 7-stringer Tele would be cool.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

What kind of back contour does your 6 have?

My Ibanez RG7620 has a back contour akin to Warmoth's 7 string Standard Thin, very easy for me to get around on.  I know that the Schecter 7's are a bit thicker, some of the ESP/LTD's too.

Since my TFS6 has a back contour akin to the Ibanez Wizard, the transition from it to my Ibby is quite natural.

 

[swarfrat]

More recent Schecters have bowed to pressure (no pun intended) to be like Ibanez - they're a bit thinner. Again, even if you are a shredder, neck thickness is a matter of personal preference that's completely orthogonal to playing style. At least until marketing (and a large chunk of marketing is internal to our own noggins)  gets involved.

I think the biggest argument against 7's and baritones for normal folks, aside from convention, is the limitations of range. On normal scale, low B is wonky. On extended scale, you're limited on the top end of the range. I think it makes a LOT more sense if you're tuning to something closer together than fourths. Major 3rds and 7/8 strings makes a lot more sense.

 

[stubhead]

I have a couple of the older Schecters, a 1999 C7+ and a 2003? 2005? Damien 7. The first is set up as my favorite slide guitar, the second I keep around more for writing and "thinking" on. The ultra-thin necks are sort-of a mistake, I think. It really doesn't mean faster, just one of those weird trends that started selling lots of guitars for Ibanez. I'm surprised Schecter bowed to the pressure, because the bigger necks were their selling point, really. Jeff Loomis & John Petrucci managed to get up a bit of speed on 'em, anyways. I had a Japanese (=good) Ibanez RG7620 that I got first, then built a Warmoth (too-thin-neck, and no options). Then I got the Schecters and sold the Ibby.

In any case, your thumb absolutely has to be in back of the neck to play wide and/or flat necks, not curled over the top. So there's nada leverage for really big bends, it turns into an either-or situation. And the people who mix them well, like John Petrucci, have worked really hard on that specific problem. You'll never run into somebody who can do all the sneaky inside-the-chord bends like Jerry Donahue doing it in the middle of a shred. And you just can't hang them at knee height and expect to be able to get around the neck to the lowest strings.

And when you think about inadequate hand size as an excuse for not playing well, you can dig up a whole list of monster-handed people like Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, John McLaughlin; and the atomic spider/king crab variants like Steve Vai and Paul Gilbert. WAAH! So there! That's why I can't play well... But then somebody might point out that a large number of great guitarists have perfectly ordinary hands. And then if they wanted to be annoying they could point out people like Shawn Lane with his tiny little stubby sausage fingers or Danny Gatton with his tiny little stubby sausage fingers. And you'd need a new excuse...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBKnYrwIP0o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5XH84mmI4

My dog ate my guitar pick.... thirty years ago! :sad1:

One thing I did start noticing when my carpal started tunneling was that the old guys who had been playing very well for a long time, and were still playing very well - Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin, Steve Morse etc. - never, ever, ever went after the giant spiderfinger stretches - always skipping strings or jumping up positions instead. All that magical "3-nps" and "4-nps" talk on the shred sites eats tendons. I also noticed that those kind of guys weren't BBQ-fat or cocaine-skinny, went to sleep at night, didn't drink their dinner, did eat their vegetables etc. Probably remembered their mother-in-law's birthday too fer pete's sakes.....