The last few years have seen a rise in the seven-string guitar. YouTube is filled with technical virtuosos showing the range of this type of guitar, and seven-strings can be found in many progressive rock and heavy metal bands.
While it may seem like the extended-range guitar is a relative newcomer to the music scene, in fact its roots go back more than 200 years.
Classical seven-string guitars
While guitars, and their precursors, lutes, have been made for many hundreds of years, there was a technological innovation in around 1800 that changed the game. That innovation was the invention of metal-wire strings.
Metal strings were more durable and produced a louder sound than their traditional gut counterparts. This allowed luthiers to experiment with dropping double-course instruments in favor of single-course ones. Guitars with six strings became common and then the accepted norm, as it remains today.
But there were players and composers who wanted to extend the musical range of the guitar, so luthiers accommodated by designing guitars with additional strings. Hence the seven-string classical guitar was born, and although somewhat rare, they are still sold today.
Jazz seven-string guitars
Around 100 years after the seven-string classical came on the scene, the jazz guitarist George Van Eps became the first person to put an extended-range guitar to a more modern use.
Van Eps contracted with Epiphone to build a seven-string jazz guitar in the 1930s. Many decades later, in the sixties, Gretsch built the Van Eps signature guitar, which was likely the first production model seven-string.
After Van Eps, other jazz guitarists of the day began using and experimenting with adding an extra string.
Up to this point, however, all of these guitars were hollow-bodies and arch-tops. The first solid-body seven-string guitar would not come about until the 1980s.
Solid-body seven-string guitars
Guitarist Lenny Breau, a Canadian-American who played a blend of many styles of music, worked with a luthier to create the first such solid-body guitar, which they then debuted at the 1983 NAMM show. This, however, was a one-off that did not gain much traction.
The same can be said for a Fender seven-string just a few years later that never made it past the prototype stage.
The real advent of the solid-body seven-string guitar was the Ibanez UV7, a signature model made for none other than rock legend Steve Vai. Vai would go on to use the guitar on Whitesnake’s Slip of the Tongue and his solo album, Passion & Warfare.
Much like his classical predecessors in the 1800s, Vai wanted to extend the range of his guitars and playing. He first experimented with adding a high A string, but it was too prone to breaking. He substituted a low B string, and the now-standard tuning was born.
Ibanez put the UV7 into production in 1990. The model did not sell well, but Vai encouraged the company to keep making them, even if they only sold a few each year.
Then, in 1994, the breakthrough happened. Korn released their debut album, Korn, which heavily featured the UV7. Vai later stated that when he heard them on the radio, he instinctively knew they were using his signature Ibanez.
The rise of Korn led to the prominence of the seven-string guitar, which has since become a staple in the progressive rock and heavy metal genres.
From classical guitar to jazz, rock, and heavy metal, the seven-string guitar has been there all along. It doesn’t have the popularity of its six-string cousin, and it probably never will, but it certainly has its own place in the history of music.
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