Asphalt driver
SS.org Regular
- Joined
- May 28, 2021
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- 3
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I‘m a djent guy, so I like some eight string tunings, but I usually find plenty of creativity within seven and sometimes six stringsI'm good with 7. I'm good with 6, really, but 7 is fun for some things. 8 strings... meh. I considered it very briefly when they were getting popular but it would have been "mostly for the lulz", honestly.
I barely listen to any 7-string stuff... most of it is like, prog, djent, -core, tech death, and I don't like any of those genres. Very few bands I care about have made 7-string music I actually like, but I did practice those few riffs when I first got my 7 though, just to have something to help me get used to the instrument. Now I could just write my own music for a 7-string guitar, and I have written a few things, but the vast majority of the time, I just prefer a 6-string. The "logistics" of how my brain approaches a 6 vs a 7 are just different, and I'm way more at home on a 6, even after owning and using a 7 for 10 years. Recently, I've noticed that I really struggle writing music with the 7 in a dropped tuning, I don't know why.
As for an 8, there's like, one song I like written for 8 strings (Demiurge, by Meshuggah, if anyone wonders). So even just for playing covers, an 8-string wouldn't really be worth it for me. And then... if the scale length is too short, the low strings sound ass, and if the scale length is too long, the high strings get into snappy tension territory, so I'd want to go fanned fret, but there aren't many quality fanned fret 8's around, and if I'd want to swap pickups or something, there isn't that much choice IMO. Another thing for me is, the chords... with the kind of guitar tone people use on an 8 to make it sound tight and all, guitar chords sound kinda just bad to me, I don't like that. I'd rather tune a little less low, and at that point, a 7 is good enough. I don't venture below B very often, I'll do Bb and maybe A but that's pretty much it. Don't care for F#, Meshuggah F, drop E or whatever.
So, yeah, I'm good with 7 strings maximum.