Who here made the jump to a seven for the hell of it?

[Scali]

Those stock pickups nearly made me sell em' off, which is why I hate most stock pickups now

They seem to have made an impact of traumatic proportions
In my experience "Duncan Designed", "Select by EMG", and other cheapo pickups with references to wellknown brands tend to actually be worse than various 'nameless' pickups

 

[JohnIce]

^ what's MUCC?

A japanese alt-rock band.

 

[MFB]

I was at this kind of clinic/NAMM style thing and my guitar teacher made a good point. He said if you've been playing and are comfortable with 6's then the natural progression is to jump to 7's and try it. Or for those who've played comfortably with 7's try 8's. I decided to grab a 7, then a little later just said fuck it I'll go all the way and jumped to 8's.

 

[wannabguitarist]

Unearth did it for me and when I started taking lessons my teacher encouraged me to play the seven more because of the range

 

[liamh]

I thought if I got a 7 I'd be all muscular like John Petrucci.

 

[JohnIce]

I thought if I got a 7 I'd be all muscular like John Petrucci.

It worked the opposite way for me... I started practicing more and going to the gym less, so I went out of shape .

 

[SerratedSkies]

My friend picked up an RG7321 for no reason at all, and he became addicted to it. Naturally, we threw him in a six-string rehabilitation clinic where he could tune himself up, and get back to normal. He relapsed, got cought with seven-string posession, and was thrown in the always low stocked Guitar Center around the way from me. He came out with a Schecter C-1 Hellraiser.

Now, as for myself, I didn't want to follow his path. I was always strict to my tuning, as I loved the idea of being balls heavy in Eb standard. But, as the saying goes, "I'll try anything twice."
I was in a Sam Ash, which usually remains twice as stocked as the Guitar Center, and I found myself also railing the shit out of a RG7321. In the back of my mind, the good part of my conscience, that little angel dude, was like "Matt, your friend ruined his life! Don't do seven!" Naturally, because the evil, devil side of my conscience grew up on Napalm Death and Carcass, he was like "Fuck the faggot in the white dress and halo. Heavy = Success."

I was terrified. I picked up six strings after that and felt naked (which also got me arrested for public nudity in the Garden City Guitar Center). I couldn't deal with such weak instruments anymore. I grabbed a used RG7321 for $250, and never turned back. My family looks at me in shame. They don't understand the mind of an addict. They began calling me names like "Daryl Strawberry" and "DMX", as if I was involved with heroin or PCP or something. I managed to ignore it, and they began to get used to my problem.

Now, I own two seven strings, countless six strings that are beat to shit and never get used... and I couldn't be happier.

I honestly feel like I tried way too hard with that story, but whatever, it made me laugh at work.

 

[Konfyouzd]

A japanese alt-rock band.

is the name an acronym or is that just the word?

 

[Variant]

But did anyone here just play sixers and then go, "Well why the hell not?" and just get a seven without being inspired to do so by a favorite band or something? If so what was your thought behind making the switch?

It wasn't so much a band (though Dream Theater and Morbid Angel helped me realize it was an option) it just made sense when I was always playing a sixer (or really having two in different tunings) because I got so irritated by losing the upper end of my range when detuning.

 

[JohnIce]

is the name an acronym or is that just the word?

It's just the word. But when it comes to strange band names, the japanese are in a league of their own.

 

[White Cluster]

I was in a heavy jazz phase back in 1998 when i got my first seven..East Coast Music Mall was having it's 2 for 1 sale and i was going to get a PRS Archtop II and a Breedlove Acoustic.Weeks before buying i was listening to George Van Epps,Howard Alden and Jimmy Bruno when the idea came that i should be getting a seven string..So come sale time i go with the Breedlove and a Brian Moore C-557..I sold it 3 yrs ago to quell the PRS G.A.S. and get my Custom 24 Artist Quilt. I absolutely love the PRS but have seriously missed the seven for the last year. Just purchased an 97 Ibanez RG7620 off of Craigslist and now i back in love with the seven again.Time to save for a EB JP7 with piezo or wait for a PRS production 7(yeah,right!).

 

[scottro202]

well, for me it was a combo between:
1) bands that used 'em
2) bands and genre's that DIDN'T use them (I'm using my 7 for blues, ska, and christian). I like to be different
3) more range
4) I can "cheat" drop-tuned songs
5) this site gave me major GAS for one

and it was the best decision I have ever made

 

[EliNoPants]

i started playing bass 5 years ago with the mentality of "i can never compete with the dudes who have been playing guitar since they were like 12, so why bother, i CAN however rock the shit out of a bass and pocket deep enough to make you drop an extra three testicles just by being in the same room as me"

fastforward about 3 years, i realize no one around me wants to play the same stuff i do, or is already in a band doing so, and i'm nowhere near good enough to join them...so i pick up guitar in order to start writing rhythm parts and putting together the skeletons of songs on my own

fastforward another year to some point about a year ago, i then had a handful of decent cheapo guitars, and 2 basses, i decided to shrink my collection down to 2 of each, and it was gonna be one bass tuned BEAD, and another in standard, then one baritone and one standard guitar...then i was noodling on bass one day, and ran the fuck out of frets and strings to keep moving around on, my exact response was something like
"FUCK THIS SHIT!!!! I NEED MORE STRINGS AND MORE FRETS!!!!"

so i decided i was going to get one high end 5-string 24-fret bass, and if i was gonna do that, i should just go the same route on guitar, which landed me searching about for info, quickly finding this place and the absurdly helpful guitar reviews section, i saved some money and finally purchased a Stephen Carpenter sig, and went "oh fuck, this neck RULES! i'm never playing a baby guitar again" and that alone, turned my guitar playing from "i'm gonna get good at brutalizing power chords" into "man, i really really like noodling on this thing, maybe i should start trying to get good at it"

now here i am, only about 6 months after actually buying that Carpenter sig and i've already got two 7-strings (a wiser man than i would have bought an amp instead of that Hellraiser, but jesus fucking christ it is SOOO goddamn sexy) and my ear for what's going on musically has improved drastically because of playing in a whole new range and having to incorporate chords, which has encouraged me a ton on really focusing with music

tl;dr version...i bought a 7-string because i figured it would be easier to own one nice 7-string than it would be to own baritones and standard guitars

 

[Bumskull]

For my second guitar all I wanted was a cheap <$700 guitar with: humbuckers, floyd rose, neck-thru, 24 frets, and active pickups. MY teacher told me it was impossible to find a 6 with those q

All I wanted 4 my second guitar was: humbuckers, active pickups, floyd rose, and neck-thru all for <$700. My teacher told nme it would be impossible to find those on a 6 stringer.

Then I found Agile

 

[skeeballcore]

All of my favorite bands at the time that I bought one were using 7's to some degree: Meshuggah, Korn, Fear Factory, Limp Bizkit, Orgy

The second that I saw the RG7621 and saw that it was affordable, I had to have one. So, that's what I went and picked out for my 18th birthday.

My band was recording our 2nd CD, and I'd never even praticed with the thing. Since guitar tracks weren't done, I just brought the 7 in, and played the songs like I normally did but using the 7th string. Turned out great, and it's still the 7 I use every day. Mostly because it's the only one I've got.

 

[hairychris]

Got my first 7 for shits & giggles, basically (a Carvin that, since me, has been on a tour of the Baltic states!). My band's other guitarist loved the thing & got one himself - and started using it as his #1 while I was still using 6ers... and eventually sold the 7 on. That band folded, we kept playing together and I decided to swap to 7s for some of the stuff... Now we use 7 for pretty much everything.

Picked up an Agile 8 simply to see what it was like too.

 

[Daemoniac]

I wanted a 7 cos i knew they were meant to be deeper sounding. That was before i'd even started playing Couldn't get one though unfortunately, so i settled for a 6 string for the time, then waited for my hideously overpriced 7420 to surface

 

[heineken_fretwalker]

I just happened to join a band that was playing 7 strings. Their rationale when they first decided to go that route was that the guitar had to always have two more strings than the bass haha. Then Al, who is one of the best bass players I've ever seen, went up to six strings, they were kinda stuck since 8 strings weren't available to anyone not named Hagstrom or Thorendal. However, I'm about to make the jump to 8, so maybe our other guitar player will follow me

 

[Harry]

I was on the verge of quitting guitar completely at one stage to be honest.
It was just becoming frustrating, because I was losing motivation to practice, I felt like I had no more creativity left in me musically and the fact I only had 22 frets as well annoyed me because I wanted to play stuff with that needed more frets.
So, when I got a job for a while, I decided I'd just start saving for a 7 string , figuring that perhaps having 24 frets plus 7 strings might inspire me a bit more.
I got my 7 and I've barely played my 6 string since. It opened up a whole new musical world for me and I feel a lot more creative and motivated now.

 

[Esp Griffyn]

I knew Korn used them and stuff, and that they had a bit of a nu metal tag back in the days when I was just getting into music, but then I progressed further down the music road, discovered Steve Vai and knew that I had to have one. Got a job, saved up for an Ibanez K-7, and the rest is history.