Greg Suarez
Well-known member
I remember "Fridays"...awesome show! That's where Jim Carry got his big break... including "Firemarshall Bill"...
"Let me show ya something..."
I'm with ya on the 6 vs. 7 string thing (I know it's just personal preference and admire folks who know how to use 7 & 8 string guitars...)
I played 5 string bass for many years and it just came naturally to me.
But since I took up guitar a couple of years ago, a 7 string just feels alien. It's gonna be a very long time before I'll get anywhere near proficient with just 6 strings...
And in my opinion, the 10 string guitar was created many years ago... it's called the Chapman Stick (I love those things...!!)
Actually, the show you're thinking about is "In Living Color," which was on in the early '90s. "Fridays" was on in the early '80s. Michael Richards (Kramer on "Seinfeld") was on "Fridays."
I used a 7-string for a couple of weeks, and I loved it. BUT... I had a very, very difficult time playing it when only a 6-string was needed. In other words, if I wanted to play something that was written for 6 strings, the 7th string (low B) completely threw me off, and I was playing it as an E. The way my brain views a 7-string guitar is like it's an entirely different instrument, rather than simply a 6-string with an extra string. This is why I cannot only have a 7-string to cover everything; I need a 6 and 7 for whatever situation is called for. Once you get the hang of a 7, it really is cool. Plus, if you want to write a song in the B-D range, you can still get a deeper tone.
Anything with 8 or more strings is lunacy (to me, at least). For starters, the neck is too wide to grip in any serious way. When you are *forced* to change the fundamental method of performing on an instrument (like that dude with the 20-string in that vid), it sort of ceases to be what it was meant to be.
