New Gear Day: Longer. Wider. Deeper.

You may think i’m talking about changing the dimensions of the Organical lab, but it was actually my secret gear acquisition, which was revealed to the band at this week’s rehearsal.

I’ve been playing seven-string guitars almost exclusively since about 2002… shortly after i joined Organical, in fact. This week marks the start of another sonic experiment: I’ve ventured even further into Extended Range Guitar territory by taking delivery of not one, but two eight-string guitars, which i had a hand in designing.

My first Agile Intrepid arrived last week. It’s a neck-thru with mahogany wings and a single EMG 808 pickup. My second arrives this week, which has a bolt-on neck, ash body and single passive pickup.

Sam greets the newcomer with suspicion…

Longer: The scale length is 28.625″. Think of it as taking a Fender Stratocaster and adding two extra frets at the low end of the neck.

Wider: With two extra strings, it needs a lot more neck to hold it all. You could land a small aircraft on this fretboard. In fact, that was one of the inspirations behind the model name i came up with for it. (The Intrepid is a retired U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.)

Deeper: So how does one tune an 8-string guitar? Well, any guitar can be tuned in any number of ways, but in my case, i tune the two extra strings low and lower. Currently, i’m using a low B and an even lower E, which puts the bottom end of this guitar’s range squarely in bass territory.

But have no fear, i’m not trying to replace Ed. I’m just trying to make things more brutal. In John’s words, “disemboweling”. But in all seriousness, it’s not just about being low and heavy. In addition to crushingly heavy tones, these guitars get some seriously piano-like clean tones, which should add some interesting dimensions to the stuff we’re recording.