As seven is not enough

So it happened! I bought my first 8-string. My god! Strings everywhere :-P
It is a beautiful Schecter  Hellraiser C-8 FR. A really properly built guitar with neck trough design and a really nice look and feel.

From factory it is tuned as a normal six stringed guitar on the top six strings. The seventh string is tuned to B and the eighth to F#. A little strange I thought at first, the 8:th string should of cause have been tuned to G. But then I realized that that should not have been a good idea since that would have meant an additional one band shift as between 3:d and 2:d string. That would have messed everything up two times. So F# it is.

I bought this guitar used as all the other guitars I buy nowadays. Since the seller lived in the same town as an old guitar player friend and of mine, he helped me to fetch the guitar. Thank you Classe, you rock!

At the same time I was looking at 8-string guitar videos on YouTube and came across one dude that talked about alternative tunings for 8- and 7-strings. He talked about lowering the third string from G to F# and therefore making a 7-string functioning the same way as a 6-string. I.e. the guitar becomes like a 6-string with start from the 7:th string. It's a little hard to describe but if you want to grip a B chord you do it with an normal E-shape starting on the 7:th string. The guitar then follows the chord all the way down to the 2:nd string since you have removed the 3:d to 2:nd string shift. That means that you without thinking can play AC/DC tunes in B. All the open chords will work. But an E-shape makes an B chord and an A-shape makes an E chord etc. Confusing? Not if you plan to play songs in B :-D. I decided to try that.

So what to do with the 8:th string? Well the most common choices are to leave it at F# or tune it down to E to create a drop tuning between the 8:th and 7:th string. I have never had a dropped tuning on any of my guitars so my first plan was to leave the 8:th string at F#.

When I got the guitar it was not tuned at all and the strings was way to thin. I looked up what strings where mounted on on delivery and they suited me perfect since it was an Ernie Ball skinny top heavy bottom set, i.e. the same type of set I use for all my guitars nowadays. I ordered a set and got it.

I did a full setup of the guitar as I always do, but when I tried to adjust the intonation on the 8:th string it was impossible. I got an octave at about the 10:th fret!!! :-O I e-mailed the Schecter technical support a couple of times and they were really helpful. Finally they asked me to check if the string was damaged in some way since that would be a logical explanation they said. I checked and I discovered this:

If you look closely you will see that the 8:th string has two different thicknesses. I complained and got a new set.  I told the story in a Facebook group and someone informed me that from the thickness 80 and up the string has a thinner end towards the tuning pegs so that it would go through the whole in the peg. I did not know that, so the error here was me mounting the string in the wrong direction. Since the guitar have a double locking system I always start with cutting off the balls and then you don't see any difference on the string ends. Embarrassing...   Well at least now I know :-) With the new set everything worked like a charm and the guitar was ready for the maiden journey.

A lot of strings for sure, but tuning the 3:d string down a half step really changed the usability of the guitar chord wise, but panic broke out when trying to improvise a solo or a fill. What the?? Then I realized that everything is really like on a normal 6-string but shifted one string up to the 7:th string. If I did not think about what actual chords I was playing the scales over it worked fine, for a while. Then it suddenly kicked in automatically and I got lost. So I was in for a challenge, i.e. fun :-) Then I deiced, why not also do a drop on the 8:th string when I'm at it. So I did, and it did not complicate things more than has already been done. And that's how I kept it. The tuning is now from 1 - 8: E, B, F#, D, A, E, B, E.

I have a short sample, but with the 8:th string still in F#. So now it goes even further down in the basement ;-)

Me and Ez Drummer goin' deep

After using the guitar some 5 times or so at rehearsals it started to make really nasty sounds. It behaved like bad connection in the output jack or the volume pot. It was hard to diagnose. After opening the stomach I noticed that one of the cables close to the pickup selector was really badly peeled. There where parts of the wire sticking out in all directions and it was probably short circuiting the signal sometimes. I tidied  it up and put everything together and than it worked fine again. Problem solved. I don't know if this was the doings of the former owner or if it was done in the factory. Never mind it is solved now.

I have also finally bought some really usable things from Music Nomad to create a better workbench for my guitar works. A Premium Work Mat and a Cradle Cube. Nice products.

Edit:
I forgot to mention that I equipped this guitar with the Super-Vee Mag-Lok also. But this time I actually got a little disappointed. When I tried to install the device I found out that it was broken. There was a crack in the plastic cylinder that should keep the magnet in place. So what happened is that the magnet got stuck on the magnet in the metal pipe and stayed there when I did a dive with the whammy. So there was no functionality. Also the pin was very loosely mounted in the metal pipe so it easily wiggled side to side during mounting. Bad quality! I have several of these units and I have not seen this before. I sure hope it was a one-time thing. Anyway some strong glue fixed the whole problem so now it is working fine. I was actually a little worried how it should work with an 8-string guitar but it worked fine. Since it is working in the balanced resting point my guess is that it is fairly independent of the total string tension. A plus for that, but a big minus for the quality this time :-(

The Flower Kings

I did a new musical discovery today :-D
I have listened to Transatlantic for a while now, mostly on some live concerts on YouTube, but I have also seen them perform on Sweden Rock Festival. I discovered Transatlantic because the former drummer of Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy, plays drums in the band. When looking at the line-up I realized that there was a Swede playing the guitar, Roine Stolt. Interesting, but I never got the idea to follow up on what bands he plays in. Today I did this. He is the founder of the Swedish progressive rock band The Flower Kings. Since Transatlantic is a so called super group it is probably a mixture of the styles from the different members and since Portnoy represents the heavier style I did not expect Roine's bands to be of the heavy type. But today I found out that The Flower Kings almost have the same heavy sound as Transatlantic. Well they do not really, but they have it in another way that I really like. I watched a live concert on YouTube today and it was really captivating. Some new sounds for  me and som old familiar ones at the same time. It was a step towards a more gentler and elegant music with sudden bursts of typical progressive passages. I liked it very much today, but as I've mentioned before I have to listen to music many times before I can really judge it. The future will tell...   Now I'm going to lookup if they have any shows planned in Sweden for this year. :-)