The Two types of 7 string players

[danenachtrieb]

me and my pops were talking and i asked him "why are there so many guys into the RG's?" because for the most part i dont like them. HOWEVER we concluded that there is two different types of sevenstringers. ones like me who use them for low range drop tuning (suicide silence, whitechapel, carnifex etc.) and those who use them for shredding(rustey cooley, jeff loomis etc.). and if you shred and sweep pick all over the place then the RG is perfect and the thiness of the neck on those is amazing. i like neck thru ESP 7's. its just a difference in styles i guess that makes every seven stringer different. with this new mentallity i realize that the RG is in fact a bad ass guitar. so what kind of seven string player are you?

 

[Thin_Ice_77]

I like RGs and I'm a mix of the two

I like 7 strings because I love having the extra range and that makes for cool contrasts. Chugging on drop A, then playing chords on the G and B string... it sounds really good to me.

 

[Harry]

I love riffing and I also love sweep picking high up using the high E string, I don't see myself as necessarily either a shredder or riffer, just both really.

 

[Rick]

I like RGs, I play in A standard, and I'm a rhythm player.

 

[renzoip]

Even though riffs are my main strength, I'm on Rusty Cooley's and Loomis side. I love the fact that you can extend your scales and do longer runs on a 7. Doing some lead work that require going through many octaves is much easier to do on a 7 string since you have the low register near. I used to be crazy about RG's but I am slowly starting to grow out of them. I do shred but I'm not really feeling the thin/flat neck anymore.

 

[gunshow86de]

I'd say I'm a riffer and a hack shredder. I do love playing leads, but they are usually slow melodic type of leads. Something like In Flames type of lead playing. But I occasionally will pull out some of the shredder "tricks" I know. The most shred worthy thing I can play is the opening to Alaska by Between the Buried and Me.

 

[Dusty201087]

I like 7+ string guitars because the standard 6 string guitar just doesn't make a lot of musical sense to me. Why have the ability to go miles over the treble clef but not even be able to hit middle C? I actually started out wanting a 7 string, then an 8, and now if I ever get a custom I'm thinking of doing a 9 string fanned fret (25.5"-28") tuned from F# to A, with 24 frets, for a grand total of over 6 octaves in range.

I play everything really. I think the "extended range" seed was really planted in my head when I started playing classical guitar. With classical, you're often playing chords or even playing your own bass line while you play another line over that, ala a piano. I started to think, "why are my bass lines in the treble clef"?

And then I found my way here, and was perverted by you guys into wanting more strings... Then more... Then more... And I'm sure later I'll want more, AND a trem

 

[Vairocarnal]

Well, I loves me some RG's and I'm a rhythm player from Hell: The left hand of a rhythm player and the picking hand of the devils themselves...although I did recently record 1 solo for the E.P recently... It started out as a random idea that came out better than I could have ever expected on the first take. The funny thing is after I finished the producer and I went to go smoke and I looked at him and said "I'm never going to play that again"...and I NEVER will.



Well, I loves me some RG's and I'm a rhythm player from Hell: The left hand of a rhythm player and the picking hand of the devils themselves...although I did recently record 1 solo for the E.P recently... It started out as a random idea that came out better than I could have ever expected on the first take. The funny thing is after I finished the producer and I went to go smoke and I looked at him and said "I'm never going to play that again"...and I NEVER will.

 

[badger71]

Hmmm...I'll play odd man out. I'm not a metal guitar player. I like a heavy sound sometimes, but I'm definitely not into the newer metal sound. My "metal-ness" peaked around '89 with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, etc...

While my style of playing incorporates a little shred and sweep here and there, these aren't techniques that I use too often simply because I'd look like a wanker if I put that into one of the songs we performed. I play in cover bands....one is more funk and pop rock...the other is more heavier rock and leans towards the progressive/fusion side of things at times. Lead playing should, IMO, add a little spice to the song...not overwhelm it....and the style should definitely fit the genre.....sweeping during a medley of Ohio Players/Earth Wind & Fire tunes is waaaaay out of place. OTOH, you can toss a little into some late '80s Queensryche no problem.

Which leads me to why I've taken to the 7....practicality. My short fingers find scalular runs difficult for 3 note/string around the 1st-5th frets....the frets are too far apart. Now, on a seven, I can bounce down to the B string 5th fret, and the spacing fits better for me....5-7-9 is easier as opposed to 1-3-5....dig? And the lower range is nice to be able to "cheat" tunes that sit in Eb or drop D.

 

[Wound]

I like RG's, but I also like alot of other 7's...i'm a rythm player...drop A sometimes drop E (8 string) or drop A with a low E.

 

[Panterica]

i don't like RGs anymore
i'm more technical death / black metaller with my 7's
always have been

 

[ILdÐÆMcº³]

I got a 7 string so I could have a medium between both styles really.

Lately I've been using 7 strings a lot for punk rock and jazz. The extra range is really useful in about any style of music if you use it right. I love extended range.

 

[darren]

I think there are many more than 2 types of seven-string players.

And i'm none of them

 

[Arctodus]

7 strings have more ability then a 6 string on tap. Your ability as a guitar player becomes sonically huge, because you can now fit into places most guitars wouldn't like mid/low range bass stuff.

The guitar is a renegade musical instrument, it started out with 5 strings - standardized to 6 and then somewhere in the 1800s someone decided to add a 7th. I think the guitar in general is looks better with an odd amount of strings, it doesn't conform to the "even-ness" that most stringed instruments do.

 

[Scali]

I've always loved the Ibanez playability. I just never liked the sound of the RGs. I stumbled upon a rare RG570CT, which has an alder body, and as such sounds different from the usual basswood. For some reason the S series didn't quite appeal to me either, tonally, even though I was a Les Paul player, so mahogany should be my thing. I never really bothered to figure out what it was... The pickups? The amp in the store that I tried them?
But when I tried an S7320 years later, somehow the tone just worked for me. And it gave me the same playability as the RG series. So I got one.

I'm mostly a lead player by the way. I don't really need the extra range. I just bought the 7-string S because somehow it seemed to sound better than the 6-string version... And I already had plenty of 6-string superstrat guitars. The extra string would give me something new.
But now that I do have the extra range, I do occasionally use it both for rhythm and lead playing. I like the low chugging sound (somehow the S sounds way better than an RG or Universe to my taste, on the low B), and it's cool that you can extend your scales in a vertical sense, rather than having to slide down the neck to get into the lower range.

 

[MF_Kitten]

i think of the 7 string as a completely different instrument, because for me the added range is in the middle, and not above or below.

i treat it as just another guitar that has more range to go on. i do rhythm stuff on the low strings, and cleans/leads/stuff on the higher strings.

the first thing i appreciated when i first played a 7 string wasn´t the extra low string, it was the fact that i could do octave harmony stuff in the middle AND the two strings below them again. on a 6 string guitar, you find yourself limiting that to the A and G strings, but on the 7 string, you have the E and D and then the A and G, without even touching the lowest string.

so yeah, i have no clue what kind of player i am. i´d say i´m more in the low tuned area though, for the sake of generalization

 

[WhiteShadow]

I'm a Rhythm player through and through. So, for me, its all about the lows.

 

[Max Dread]

I play and love playing Ibanez RGs.

I certainly agree that there are more than 2 types of 7 string player.

And along those lines I'll add something that I find of benefit with 7 strings:

Before they became widespread it was pretty common in metal circles to play riffs in the ubiquitous key of E (or whatever you downtuned the lowest/thickest string to). And that meant that the root note was always deepest and you could therefore only go higher when constructing riffs. Seems a lot of players have just translated this to a low B (or again - whatever you have downtuned to). Of course, I do this as well.

But what I really like about 7 strings (and more) is that you can write a song based around the root of E (for example) but as part of that riff you can go LOWER - not just higher.

 

[Scali]

Before they became widespread it was pretty common in metal circles to play riffs in the ubiquitous key of E (or whatever you downtuned the lowest/thickest string to). And that meant that the root note was always deepest and you could therefore only go higher when constructing riffs. Seems a lot of players have just translated this to a low B (or again - whatever you have downtuned to). Of course, I do this as well.

I always went out of my way to not just play in the key of E or other 'obvious' keys for guitar (where open strings play the most important role).
On 6-string I generally used chord inversions to give the impression that the chord was actually lower than an open E or such.
Some people actually thought I was playing downtuned when they heard some of my songs. But I always tune to E-standard on 6 and B-standard on 7. There is little point in other tunings for me. I prefer to use different chord voicings.

 

[PeteLaramee]

I love my RG necks. I guess I'd fall somewhere between the two categories...I don't consider myself a metal dude, but I like riffing...I don't consider myself a shredder, but I like soloing.