Saturday, December 08, 2007

This one goes to 7


I've been playing my guitar a bunch more with all of the music at the new job (and I'm loving it!), but after listening to all of the great heavy metal shows at Deep Rock Drive over the past month, I was itchin' to get a 7 string guitar. 7 strings have an extra low B string which helps in getting a dark, growl sound and play a bit lower than usual. I have a 5 string bass that works the same way and I love it.

Ebay to the rescue! I spent a few weeks checking out different 7 strings and looking for something that looked good, but wasn't too expensive since I'm not even sure if I'll like it. I ended up buying a Galveston 7 string with a Floyd Rose tremolo. Galveston is an inexpensive Korean brand that seems to specialize in nice looking wood and finishes for the bodies but I was curious about the quality of the guitar. At only $250, I figured it was worth the risk. The pictures looked great with a tiger-eye maple top and a nice red finish. The guitar arrived last weekend. It sounds good and looks really nice, but it really needed to be set up by a guitar tech to set the intonation correctly so it is off at American Music getting tweaked right now. It should be ready tomorrow.

This is my first guitar with a Floyd Rose tremolo. For those who aren't familiar, tremolos (or whammy bars) are the things you push to bend the whole set of strings either up or down. Very popular with most electric guitars. The problem is that they often make the guitar go out of tune when the string gets a little stuck on either the bridge or the nut. The Floyd Rose system clamps the string at both ends so there is nothing to get stuck on which should make it stay in tune better. The downside is that you can't use the standard tuners unless you have unlocked the nut with a hex wrench so it takes a but of getting used to...

I'm really looking forward to trying it out some more!

Update - It was definitely worth the $250, but getting used to a neck that wide takes some time!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How did this guitar end up for you? The price point looks great but I haven't got a hold of any reviews.