Charlie4 wrote:
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to extended range guitars so what would you look for in a high class 8-string?
Well the bridge that one comes with is a nice design, as it's essentially a copy of the Hipshot hardtail, but that's about where my admiration of them went. I'm gonna do this in bullet points to explain what I don't like about them, and most budget 8s really:
* The scale length is 26.5" which just isn't that great for that F# or E (If you like to drop it) for instance my 8 sits at 27" and the tension spread on it using a .010 gauge set of strings with a .060 for the low B more or less centered in at an increasing tension from about 13lbs going up to about 15lbs, with mine tuned at E with a .080 gauge lowest string it still only sits at about 14lbs of tension, so a .082 or .084 would have been better but this starts to create a negative effect tonally and makes strings about 100x more difficult to find and would require drilling open the post on the machine head.
* This 8 can only accept up to about a .074 because the machinehead isn't wide enough and the scale doesn't allow for you to just slip the taper in the machinehead, which is a massive problem if you look at my above string tension qualm.
* The pickups these come with are not very good, now I know what you're thinking "Just get some new ones" but here's where the problem comes in, likewise with the Ibanez S series 8 strings (Cause they use the same pickup, just not rebranded), the pickups in this are smaller than an active soapbar housing but larger than the traditional passive housing so either your pickup won't fit or you'll need to route out wood depending on which option you go for.
* It has a great big square neck joint, I know some people think that's fine, but it's not, it doesn't take that much more time for a CNC machine to knock off the corners and round it out a little bit. This problem is annoying enough on strats but with a neck this much wider it becomes even more of a hindrance.
* The body is quite small but the headstock is quite large and this wasn't compensated for with lighter weight machineheads so these tend to have a fair bit of neck dive, in fairness so do the RGs, but it is more pronounced with these 8s.
* Hipshot sell their original version of this bridge with a shortened saddle to intonate the 8th string correctly, this doesn't have one of those so you're almost guaranteed to be zeroing out the low saddle while potentially not hitting the point you want anyway.
* Fretboard is bound, which may look nice but it does mean that you'll pay more to have it refretted and the nice big strings you've gotta use for an 8 not only eat through frets faster but also require the frets be kept in better condition as they have a wider vibrational arch and are therefore more susceptible to introducing buzz and fretting out if the frets aren't the correct relationship of heights with each other.
These are all just my personal opinions so take em with a pinch of salt and all that ?
