20 Greatest 7-STRING Guitarists EVER (And Their Guitars!)

The mighty 7-string guitar has become an accepted part of our culture. Particularly within heavier musical styles, the advent of the 7-string guitar opened sonic gates that forever changed the sound and expression of contemporary guitar music.

Even as 8 string guitars become more widely popular, it seems that most heavy guitarists still prefer a 7. Is that because it’s heavy enough? Low enough? Close enough to a standard 6-string to make the transition easy? I think it might be a combination of all of the above, but whatever the case, there’s no mistaking the pure satisfaction and joy that comes from unleashing those low-range notes!

Today, I want to shine a light on some of the greatest wielders of the 7-string guitar. The early adopters, the pioneers and the developers: they’ll all be found in today’s blog, so get ready for some epic heaviness!

No two guitarists have done more to put the 7-string guitar on the map of heavy music than Head and Munky from Korn. The band's longevity speaks for itself, but in their early years, Korn’s sound came out of nowhere and shook a tidal wave of change throughout the industry. It’s hard to express how much they rewrote the sound of metal purely by going lower, slower and swapping out shreddy solos for grimy, dissonant sound design. 

Brian ‘Head’ Welch and James ‘Munky’ Shaffer took an obscure guitar that had had its moment, and wrote a new vocabulary for rock and metal on it. 

Korn Guitars

• Ibanez UV7 Universe (originally)
• Ibanez KY models, YIN for Munky and YANG for Head

Sweden’s Meshuggah are always ahead of the game. Back in the 90s when most bands were still working their way through post-Nirvana ‘alt rock’, Meshuggah took a pair of 7-string guitars and wrote music that would eventually become THE sound of modern metal. Korn changed the game and accidentally created Nu Metal, but Meshuggah rewrote modern metal for the generations after that: they were just 15 years ahead of everybody else.

Meshuggah Guitars

• Ibanez FTM33 ‘Stoneman’ for Fredrick Thordendal
• Ibanez M80M and M8M for Mårten Hagström

Fear Factory are another band who were playing music that sounded light years ahead of their heavy metal competition. It’s hard to consider that their second album Demanufacture is over 30 years old, because it sounds like it could’ve been released last month!

Apart from excellent production and well-placed Terminator 2 samples, the main reason for Fear Factory’s success was the astoundingly crushing guitar riffs from Dino Cazares. His stun-gun approach to rapidfire riffing is legendary, and has comprised 6, 7 and 8 string guitars over the years. However, even on a 6-string, Cazares tuned to B, so his riffs were 7-string in register at least! These days he uses both 7 and 8 string guitars to apocalyptic effect.

Fear Factory Guitars

• ESP M-II (modified for B standard tuning in the early days)
• Ibanez RG-7, RGA-7 and DCM100 Dino Cazares signature model
• Ormsby GTR Dino Cazares signature

Steve Vai’s a unique and inspiring innovator on the guitar, and that forward-thinking vibe extends to his instruments themselves. Just as his signature JEM guitars brought about the birth of the Ibanez RG range - one of the most successful rock guitar lines in history - his desire for more led him to add a low B to his guitar, resulting in the Ibanez Universe.

The Universe was not the first 7-string ever (see below), but it was the first commercially available 7-string, and paved the path for future innovations from the likes of Korn, who took a then under-utilised Universe and took it somewhere else entirely. For Steve, it became an integral part of many solo compositions, and even made it onstage with Whitesnake!

Steve Vai’s 7-Strings

Ibanez Universe UV7 and all subsequent Universe models inc UV70P

The Scorpions’ lead guitarist has expressed a lifelong desire to evolve and expand. This led him, in the early 80s, to developing his own Sky guitar in both 6 and 7 string permutations. The first Sky prototypes arrived in 1983, and his favourite, ‘Mighty Wing’ (which is a 7 string with over 30 frets!!) was brought into the world a few years later. Yes, years before the Universe, but crucially, they were not built to sell and so whilst Roth arguably invented it, Vai’s take remains the first commercially available 7-string guitar.

Uli Jon Roth’s 7 String Guitars

Sky Guitars: several models including his favourite, Mighty Wing

Deftones have endured from their pre- nu metal early days up to where they are now as arena headliners. Not bad for a band who lean so unabashedly into enormous downtuned riffs!

Guitarist Steph Carpenter has always brought the metal element to the band, and his distinctive riffing style has expanded throughout his career from 6 string to 7 and even 8 string guitars.

Deftones aficionados will be able to dive deep into which particular songs use which particular guitars and tunings, but it seems that he went to 7-strings around the self-titled album time (2003) and moved to 8 strings for 2010’s Diamond Eyes. In terms of tunings, he gets progressively lower (of course!) with his 7 strings going from G# standard to drop F#, though his 8-string guitars are tuned to their standard pitch of F#, with the rest of the guitar in normal E standard tuning, so F#, B, E, A, D, G, B, E.

Steph Carpenter guitars

ESP SC signature models, including the SC607B and STEF B8.

Tim Henson is the current generation’s poster boy for avant-garde metal. Polyphia have built a career around his and Scott LePage’s complex, snaking guitar parts that owe as much to videogame soundtracks as to rock music. Their genre-bending sound is based on some pretty fearsome technique, and Henson uses both an Ibanez 7-string and a signature nylon string guitar to create his influential melodic lines and riffs.

Tim Henson Guitars

Ibanez TOD70 7-string and TOD10N nylon string

It may not be immediately obvious to the casual listener, but Dream Theater have had 7 string guitars in their sound for most of their career! It’s perhaps because their brand of metal is proggy and melodic, but (if I’m not mistaken) there has been a 7-string guitar on all but one of DT’s albums! Not every song, granted, but John Petrucci employs them regularly, and to pretty devastating effect.

He’s an incredible player, obviously, and has also included 8 string parts in more recent material, but he is definitely one of the world’s most proficient 7-string guitar players!

John Petrucci Guitars

Ernie Ball Music Man JP-15 7-string, Sterling JP70 and Majesty 7-string

Tosin Abasi is a game changer. His approach to guitar has proven enormously influential to a whole generation of players, to the point where certain techniques are attributed to him whether he invented them or not!

Blistering speed mixed with a unique hammer on technique he calls ‘thumping’ make up Abasi’s trademark sound, within a body of music that is technical sci-fi instrumental at its best. A visionary artist, Abai has collaborated with Music Man to create the Kaizen range of guitars, as well as Cordoba for a very unique nylon 7-string. AND he also owns his own Abasi Concepts guitar brand. Impressive!

Tosin Abasi Guitars

Ernie Ball Music Man Kaizen 7, Abasi Larada 7

Trivium are another significant act who’ve taken on the extra power and sonic size afforded by 7 string guitars. Using them alongside 6-strings, they began to incorporate 7 string guitars from their Crusade album onwards. They are now a permanent part of the band’s sound.

Trivium Guitars

Epiphone Matt Heafy Origins Les Paul Custom 7-string, Jackson Pro Series Signature Corey Beaulieu King V KV7Q

How do you feel about 7 string guitars? Whilst it’s true that you can use one to play any style of music, it’s overwhelmingly clear that most guitarists turn to them when they want huge, low-end riffs for metal. They just lend themselves particularly well to the sound, and that in turn has shaped the modern sound of heavy music. 

Whilst it’s hardly true to say that most players own a 7-string (they absolutely don’t), they are more numerous than ever before. Most non-heritage companies offer at least one, and companies like Jackson, Schecter and Ibanez excel at making affordable, mainstream 7-string guitars that deliver across the board.

If you haven’t yet tried out a 7-string, you could be missing a really simple and direct way to open up your sound and revitalise your playing. Hit the button below to see our huge stock of 7-string guitars, and maybe treat yourself!

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