So my dad bought me a cheap Jackson JS22-7 Dinky 7 string in flat black. It's only like $200 but it's made of good woods. It's just got cheap tuners, pickups, & hardware. Just so happens that Misha Mansoor of Periphery likes the combo woods of this guitar (basswood body, maple neck, rosewood fretboard) so I thought I'd buy his signature Bareknuckle pickups "juggernauts" & some upgraded pots with a push pull tone knob for a cool tap. I'm so stoked they came in today! Once I get them installed & some new locking tuners it will sound like a $1000 axe! Pickups & pots costs like $400, twice as much as the guitar lol. I'll update this when the upgrades are in place, anybody else got some beast guitars to post?
My axe is a $300 Schecter six string. Everything on it is stock except for the strings. I use the beefy Earny Ball Cobalts and keep the thing tuned a full step down. I've got a fairly low-end tube amp, but my metal tone is still pretty awesome. Some day I'll upgrade to a higher end guitar and get creative with some upgrades of my own, but for now I'm perfectly happy with this. If love to try a seven strong some time, so I look forward to seeing how this project turns out. If you write anything, I'd love to hear it some time. There are a lot of musicians in the forge community. @Behemoth, @PA1NTS, @The Fated Fire, @WARHOLIC.
I play a little myself. 7 strings feel so nice but since I play punk/hardcore, I never invested in one. Power cords, chugs and walks don't exactly require the extra string. Haha. What I'm running right now is a focus 4000 V with a Floyd rose and standard pickups. I have it tuned in B but only because the Floyd rose makes it a bit of a pain to retune. It's sound is tolerable. Do either of you have any recordings?
My family has an addiction to music (mainly guitar) I'll post a pick of my fathers guitar room if you guys are interested.
I have a ESP LTD M100fm with a Floyd on it. I was originally going to upgrade it until my dad got me the Jackson. The esp is in standard just to play around with dive bombs & dimebag squeals & I hate restringing & tuning it lol. I'll post some pics tomorrow or something. I have a Gibson Les Paul all black I have been customizing as well that I play at church. I'm becoming obsessed with Monuments & TesseracT style music & I plan to write that way now. I only have 2 recordings I made like 4 years ago on garage band on my phone. I used the smart guitar tho so it sounds pretty cheesy & my writing style has changed since then. I was heavy into metal core. Extremely slow breakdowns followed by constant blast beats with fast riffs. Edit: As far as amps go, I am buying a protools/eleven rack combo to do my recordings with & I have a Protone pedals Misha Mansoor attack drive pedal to add to whatever settings I can get on the elevenrack so its going to sound very beastly. I plan to get the Axe FX II one day as well. Its a pricey unit but is far superior to any amp modeling. I wont be playing live gigs (no plans too anyway) so there isn't a need for an actual cab atm.
I think there are better options that Pro Tools/Eleven Rack if you are not already in the industry. I would honestly advise using any other DAW and going third-party for your tones because I think Avid is terrible when it comes to upgrade pricing. The combination is not bad, but I would cite ethical reasons for not recommending them. I really like what UAD, Plugin Alliance and Softube are doing when it comes to emulations, but most of those introduce a bit of latency, so I might just recommend going straight for the AxeFx if you can save a little bit. I don't really use the Elevenrack/AxeFx though and pretty much stick to plug-ins or the real deal. Edit: If you get into Pro Tools, you're limiting what plug-ins you can get into also because they use their own proprietary format for plug-ins (AAX). If you go the route where a DAW supports VST, you open up yourself to some really great plug-ins. Some companies that I would advise checking out if you get into production/mixing would be: Fabfilter, Soundtoys, and Eventide. Those are probably the main companies I use and they all have great interfaces.
I always just tuned to drop d or c. Never actually wanted to play a seven string. I got a gibson sg faded and a shecter with emg pick ups and locked tuning can't remember the model I just know it was 400 bucks or so. I am mostly into playing and writing blues/rock/altenative now. My old band still has some songs on myspace under the name Vittoria. Right now I am trying to improve my style to fit in with more of a three piece sound. I always played in 4 and 5 pieces so it is a different experience for me.
I mainly want pro-tools because I have worked with it before & I am somewhat familiar with it. Also for the price of pro-tools 12 I can get it with the elevenrack in a bundle so that's pretty sweet. The main plug in I will be using is superior drummer 2.0 which does work with pro-tools so I'm ok with it. @ Purely fat, I always played drop-d too but ever since I got into Monuments, Periphery& TesseracT I gave it a shot. Something about that drop-A and hitting a full 7 string chord feels so powerful. I love it now but I used to view it as uneccessary and almost like cheating or selling out, lol. I love blues too, SRV is my favorite of all time. I like to play blues on my Gibson Les Paul Studio. I bought that on back in the day when I was single and it was about $1200. Here's an out dated pic of it: I have since customized it. The pickup covers are black now, I put Grover locking tuners (black), all black hardware. I basically swapped all the chrome with black & put a roller style bridge. I'll try to get updated pics. Also here's my church pedalboard set up:
That is a pretty guitar. I'll take some pics of my **** if I remember. I play in standard tuning now. I only have one pedal. I don't even use it anymore. It was a zak wylde (however you spell his name) overdrive pedal. I ran it through this 50 watt crate tube amp until I got my dual rectifier. I love the sound of that amp so much. Got it used at guitar center for 1100 bucks. My sg was around 600 bucks. Right now if I were to get anything I think I would probably get a fender Jaguar.
Updated pics of the Gibson with the black hardware & pickup covers. And I just got the Jackson back today. Looks sweet except the dooshbag put a ding in it with something. Notice in the second pic there's a little whit spot but I covered it with my thumb in the first. So annoying.
It's a nice surprise to see how many musicians are on here, I had no idea you played guitar! (with a very similar taste in metal I might add). Periphery's been a favorite of mine since their self-titled, and I suggest if you like them (specifically Misha's work) to check out Animals at Leaders if you can dig instrumentals; Misha co-produced their first album with Tosin Abasi. How long have you been playing for? Myself, I have a few guitars, but my mains are a PRS Mira S1 in Cherry Red, fantastic guitar (that's where I got my username from, way back when), an Ovation CE44-4 Elite (beautiful acoustic with a built-in pickup and an OP-4BT preamp system with EQ/volume/gain controls and a tuner because why not). Also got a Ibanez RG470, my workhorse, got it 10 years ago and still play it to this day. I'm in the process of getting a seven-string myself, leaning towards Ibanez, but tell me what you think of the Jackson. Also getting a hollow body because my style incorporates jazz fusion a bit. Let me know how those pickups are too, been meaning to get either those or the Alpha/Omega set.
Animals as Leaders is pretty awesome. I've seen them live twice. Tosin's skill and creativity are incredible. For seven strings, have you considered a Schecter? They make some amazing metal guitars with fast necks and great tone and appear to be much better priced than Ibanez models. Just a thought.
Pictures it is then: The PRS Mira... ... and the Ovation CE44-4 Elite. Took these some time ago and they're the best I've got. Used 'em for a photography class I had taken. I've heard good things about Schecters. My brother plays guitar too and he's a die-hard Schecter fan, he's got a few of their guitars including their Synyster Gates Custom. I've played his guitars and I do genuinely like them, they're great guitars, but to be honest I've always been a little biased towards Ibanezes. I haven't played their seven-strings but I'll actually go out soon and give them a try. What do you think of Schecter? I read you had a six-string of theirs.
Ordered these last night for my PRS. https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/main/pickups.php?cat=humbuckers&sub=vintage_hot&pickup=emerald Pickup shopping is impossible, but I think I made a the right decision. The pickups that PRS put in the guitar sound incredible, but they are just too low output and a tiny bit muddy on the low end. What's cool is that I should be able to get a pretty penny off of resale, because PRS only puts the 58/15's (my current pickup) into their insanely expensive guitars or limited guitars. https://reverb.com/item/3332416-prs-58-15-lt-pickups-2016-nickel Haha, that's insane. 800 dollars new. https://reverb.com/item/981852-paul-reed-smith-58-15-treble-bass-pickups-rare-impossible-to-find This was the cheapest used pair I could find. I'm going to make 200 bucks, lol.
I love their burnt chrome covers. That's insane on the PRS pickups, I would never have known. Also, I love Reverb. I am a beast on there. I have made so much profit from that site it's insane. I bought the Warwick 6 string bubinga corvette for $1100, played it for 8 months & sold it for $1600. I bought an the Ibanez TAM10 8 string guitar for $730 & sold it for $890 6 months later. Just last week I bought a Line 6 Helix with the Helix backpack for $1000, and sold it the very next day for $1350 and didn't even have to ship it cuz the buyer lived 45 minutes away. So I bought another Helix yesterday I should get in Friday to turn for another profit. I'm saving up to buy a custom Kiesel DC multi scale 8 string with a zebrawood fretboard. Plus I'm moving into another house soon that has an extra room for my studio stuff. I'll finally have a home studio & im trying to raise some cash for acoustic treatment & some other gear I'll need. So God bless Reverb.com
I have to hear it. We should collab on some stuff just for fun. I'm getting pretty good at programming drums. Here's some stuff I whipped up in a few days with a friend. https://www.dropbox.com/s/opm33dqvqmyx1a3/Feb 24 Full.mp3?dl=0
That's pretty good paints! I like it. I have the full blown Superior Drummer 2.0 with Metal Foundry expansion pack. I haven't messed with it enough yet. I can lay out the drum track where I want it and all I just don't know how to properly mix them or where to add compression or reverb to get the full, real sound. They sound pretty real as they are but not like an album you hear fully mixed & mastered. I feel like once I get my studio Lined out I will be progressing much faster than now. At the moment all my stuff is tucked in a closet so I wait till my kids are asleep then I have to drag everything out and settle in to start working on it and then the wife wants to be sexed so I go give her all of my creative juices & then I crash lol. Once it's all set up it's just a button push away in a separate room made special for this purpose. Either that or it's a big excuse to not try & be let down by failure haha.