Ibanez 7 strings

I've been playing guitar now for 4/5 years and i've always had a thing for Ibanez guitars. I've also always had a thing for playing heavy crunchy music. I use an Epiphone SG going into a Boss MT2, into a Crybaby Wah, then into an Ibanez 60's fuzz pedal. I was happy with this setup until i listened to Limp Bizkits new album, and also Soulfly,s album.

Then i came to the decision that my sound was way too lame, so heres where you come in. Would i be better off buyin an Ibanez 7 string and keeping my current setup, or should i buy an Ibanez smash box ? Money is an issue, but i want the ultimate grunt. Please help as everything i play nowadays sounds girly and Robbie Williamsesque ...

I cant carry on like this ... Please help.

Cheers ... WEDGE.

Wes Borland plays through a Mesa/Boogie and uses EMG pickups. He also uses Boss pedals for his distortion and other effects he uses. So if money is an isue, then I'd just keep saving up your money. Also, don't try to have the same tone as someone else. That's one of the things that makes you different and unique from everyone else. Just mess around with different amps and effects until you find something you like.

[Edited by BadHorsie on 03-22-2001 at 04:15 PM]

i wonder how he gets his fretboard to glow, i also saw the guitarist from 3 doors down ibanez glow like that to. I have a blacklight marker which does it under the light in my room, i think that is so cool.

I always hear bad things said about limp bizkit, but i never hear anybody come out and attack wes, saying he's talentless, or maybe i haven't been listening hard enough. Is he an ok guitarist in everybody's book?

I think a lot of people make him out to be a lot better than he really is. But I never judge a guitarist when he's in a band like that because you never really get to hear their full potential.

cheers for the advice. Very true about the 'be origional point'. I try my best as i down tune my normal 6 string down to an 'A' and slap up the bass until the floor shacks, but i can never seem to get the bite that i want, and if i turn up the gain or treble or mid the signal always breaks up or i get that nasty hissing noise in the background.

any hints on that ?

also, what's the crack with Keys ? I've been playing for a while, but never really concentrated on the theory side, just what sounds right, so when someone asked me to play a solo in the key of E, i was stumped. I've recently been told that the key is determined by the first chord in the song. Is this true ? and if so, how can i use that to work out a solo ? The song in question was COUNTRY FEEDBACK by REM. chords = Em G D C.

please help.

thanks... Wedge.

Wes Borland rocks ... seriously.

and how does Tom Morello (RATM) take his lead out and still get a sound when playing ?

Wedge.

Some guy tried to explain it to me one time but i was like huh? he was like you need to turn your distortion all the way up and need a whammy pedal, and rock the pedal whilst putting the cable against the steel on your guitar. Or something like that.

Originally posted by jake sommers
Some guy tried to explain it to me one time but i was like huh? he was like you need to turn your distortion all the way up and need a whammy pedal, and rock the pedal whilst putting the cable against the steel on your guitar. Or something like that.

That's almost it.

Just turn on the distortion, turn the whammy pedal on, but without using it's effect(basically turn off its bypass mode), take out your lead, and tap with the jack on something metal, while using a wha (not whammy) pedal.
It's the whammy pedal that's switched on that really gives it the 'guitar-like' sound.

Greetz, TK

[Edited by trendkillah on 01-23-2001 at 05:10 PM]

The reason you get floppy sounds and such when you tune down to A on your guitar is that the tension of the string isn't great enough to limit the field of vibration for the strings. This causes the strings to buzz against the neck, and also keeps them from being in the proper place for the pickups to pick up the sound.

If you want to tune this low and have decent tone, buy bigger strings. I tune down a whole step in standard tuning DCGFAD, and use 11 guage strings. Considering A is much lower than D, i'd suggest using the heaviest strings you can find, 13 guage. This will also require setting up your guitar differently, possibly having to recut the nut slots, and certainly adjusting the relief of the truss rod.

About the Tom Morello noise, the noise you get when you unplug your guitar while the amp is on, thats what it is, and the wah/whammy pedals manipulate the textures it has. Also, this is terrible for your speakers, and is often the cause of extreme wear on the speakers which leads to frying the buggers. Not a good idea at high volumes. And if you use tube amps, don't do this unless you can afford to fix gear when you damage it. Too bad, it's a fun noise.

Atomic

alright kids, here are the details for stuff that was previously posted which is misleading and offcenter to the truth.

Wes Borland does not use EMG pickups. He uses the standard PRS Custom 22/24 pickups loaded into his guitars. He never used EMG's on the Ibanez 7 strings either. They were stock passive pickups that Ibanez helped formulate with Wes for his guitars to bring out the harmonics a lot more. He does play Mesa Boogie amps...specifically Triple Recto heads chained in a pair and uses a Dual Recto as a backup. He also uses the Roland JC-120 as the clean amp. He never made his 4 string guitar with his own hands either. That "Nookie" guitar was custom made and is strung with bass string sized guages to accmodate the slap and pop sound of the song.

Tom Morello does the "grounding" lead by unplugging his guitars' jack and grounding it to a metal surface on his guitar. Unless you are playing through a deadbeat electric, your electric will emit a noise when you do this. Provided that you turn up the gain and do a bit of magic with pedals, you can manipulate the frequencies that the grounding action makes. Try it with a whammy or crybaby. Tom Morello uses EMG pickups on his "Arm the Homeless" blue guitar which is made up of a performance guitar body and a kramer neck.

Wedge, to get the ultimate grunt you need the gear. I have always sworn to the fact that you can't sound big using a hondo guitar through a cheesy ass Peavey 1x12 bandit and expect it to sound like a gigantic Mesa through a pair of rectifier cabinets. it is not going to happen. the sound you crave is not going to come from just the guitar. getting a seven string would still need a good amp to sound huge and cut sharp to sound heavy. INVEST IN GOOD GEAR NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES. it always pays off to enjoy great gear than pay less to get immediate gratification. the shake of a good amp using a good guitar will make you happier. trust me.

Mic, good job on your research there buddy. One problem, though. Wes Borland does use EMG pickups on his 7 string. You should probably check into that a little more. I'm not saying that every time you see him play that he'll have them on every guitar. But he does, in fact, use them. This is fairly recent news which would explain why you missed out on it.

[Edited by BadHorsie on 03-23-2001 at 09:19 PM]

Let me also shed a little more light on this subject of Wes Borland's tone. My guitar tech, Allen, recently had a discussion w/ the CEO of Mesa/Boogie at the N.A.M. show. There he asked why he allows people with "sh!tty tone" endorse his amps. With a sigh and a chuckle he looked back at Allen and said, "Yeah, their tone sucks. But you'd be amazed at how much we sell because of their crappy tone,". On the other hand you have Soldano amps who claim they will never let someone endorse their products if they didn't like their tone. Word is in... amp tech's all agree that Limp Bizkit's tone sucks! Of course, the only opinion that matters is your own. Just something to keep in mind, though.

Originally posted by jake sommers
I always hear bad things said about limp bizkit, but i never hear anybody come out and attack wes, saying he's talentless, or maybe i haven't been listening hard enough. Is he an ok guitarist in everybody's book?

That's because he admits he sucks. I'm so sick of this "nu-metal" (pop-rock, in reality) getting so much media attention and airplay, I could vomit. Why can't people see that all this stuff is the same old recycled crap? Fortunately, I think it's almsot dead. The Limp-wrist-it and Corn clones are flooding the market at an unbelievable rate now, so pop culture will get tired of it soon.

As for the initial post, don't buy the Ibanez smash box, it sucks.

Originally posted by BadHorsie
Let me also shed a little more light on this subject of Wes Borland's tone. My guitar tech, Allen, recently had a discussion w/ the CEO of Mesa/Boogie at the N.A.M. show. There he asked why he allows people with "sh!tty tone" endorse his amps. With a sigh and a chuckle he looked back at Allen and said, "Yeah, their tone sucks. But you'd be amazed at how much we sell because of their crappy tone,". On the other hand you have Soldano amps who claim they will never let someone endorse their products if they didn't like their tone. Word is in... amp tech's all agree that Limp Bizkit's tone sucks! Of course, the only opinion that matters is your own. Just something to keep in mind, though.

I'll second that, Limp-wrist-it/Corn/nu-metal's tone does suck real bad. Mesas actually are great amps (Metallica, Dream Theatre, and Testament come to mind) if you set them up right and don't tune down 475 steps like theese sh*tty bands.

good point bad horsie, wes doesn't use EMG p/u in all of his guitars especially in the PRS models he uses. i have seen the quilted yellow top 7 string that wes uses and those don't have EMG's on them as does his other AX series guitars. it is weird but unless he figured the EMG's to look like passive open top pickups then I am in the dark about his gear. keep me up to date on this.

it is weird how some people criticize wes' tone as being sucky when everyone giving the opinion is a guitar player and/ or musician . Because of this they tend to loose sight of the fact that one guy's heavenly tone may be another guy's suck ass sound. you can't generalize everything under the sun just because a bunch of guitar techs say so, right? they may fix the guitars and do the mechanical stuff but they still have a secondary view to the musicians who churn out the music. hell, I can't stand trebly punk rock guitar sounds and surf guitar textures but i love the sound of a fat blues tone as well as the crunch of a dual recto mesa. inversely, eric clapton may not like White Zombie's razor sharp guitar attack as much as he does BB King's smooth Gibson based tone. herein lies the paradox that every guitar player must understand, you can't love them all and expect everyone to agree on one damn thing because personal taste is what makes music different and unique. trying to squeeze everything into a common category is just not going to work and people need to learn that.

with regards to Soldano amps...I have used and owned a couple Soldanos and I didn't like them as much as the Mesa amps I have now. The SLO-100 was too inflexible to tweak to miniscule detail and the HR-50 XL was too glassy sounding that it annoyed me beyond normal grief. some other guy somewhere might be infuriated by this because he might happen to hate mesa and love soldanos. that is my 2 cents...

Also a good point. And just to add, we've been over this and threads like it in the past many of times. So when you say you can't squeeze everything into one category, most of the guitartricks vets have learned that lesson... hopefully. However, there is still a need to re-establish this point because of the growing number of new members joining the site. As far as Wes goes if you really want to know what guitar he's using w/ the EMGs now just email me and I'll find out for you.