Installing and Using GK3 on a 7-string guitar - my experience

[Kitko]

Yeah, I'm one of those. Not that I absolutely need the bottom-end B all the time, but a wider neck suits me better. And it's nice to have low place to go.

Anyway, when it came to deciding which of my guitar will have the honor of hosting the GK-3, I chose the 7-string Ibanez RGA7 over the RGA121 which is a Prestige range and hence to nice to tape/stick/drill anything into.

The natural thing to do is to mount the GK3 in such a way as you would do on a regular 6-string guitar - that means that your Bottom B would not get processed by the GK3 pickup.

Second, I decided to mount the pickup up-side-down - GR-55 enables to specify 'reverse' position - in other words, the cable points downwards towards your guitar volume/tone knobs.

The benefits are that the protruding end of the pickup and the cable do not get into your way - that's CRUCIAL if you do palm-muting and/or tend to rest your palm/hand exactly where the cable is. This means you don't need to adjust yet another part of your playing technique.

Not only that, chances of hitting the GK3 accidentally are further diminished as you can enjoy a protective buffer of the Bottom B.

There is, however, on issue with mounting your GK3 on a 7-string guitar.

See, the radius on a 6-string tops right in the middle between G and D strings. However, on a 7-string, it's right on D.

In my case, the radius on the RGA7 is 400 mm. But, even if you set your GK3 to mirror that (at 400 mm), there's a tiny problem of alignment.

See, if you place the pickup right under the corresponding strings, the GK3 circle and the Guitar Circle will be slightly offset. As a result, the distance between pickup magnets and the strings on D, A and E will be higher than on E, B and G.

The problem will get amplified if your guitar, like my RGA7, has a curved top. You may need to experiment with lifting just the offending end of the GK3 to get the perfect pitch.

In my case, I decided to go with the bigger gap - and so far, I have no issues with tracking or the pickups being overly sensitive.

Sonically, using the GK3 on a 7-string gives you a unique opportunity to explore the raw bottom end of the Bottom B with added synthesized sounds of the standard six string. And trust me, it can be really intriguing especially if you're into progressive metal and similar stuff.

[Anatma]

I'm having a similar experience on my agile 8 string, I just got my Gk-3 yesterday, installed it backwards (good to hear the gr-55 can compensate because it made some patches wonky when I tested it) and wound up filing the 3mm shim to taper to 2.1mm on one end to help the radius, still doesn't look quite right, but I'm going to mess with it more after work today!

[Kitko]

I'm having a similar experience on my agile 8 string,

I'm glad to see more people experimenting with GKs on 7 and 8 string guitars.

[chrish]

I placed a gk-2 on an ibanez 8 string guitar. The two low strings i'll tune to what ever open bass notes that fit what ever tune i'm playing or tune them to E and A so i can extend chord fingering and scale to chords i already know. Easy to extend a bar chord for example. Those 2 low string don't go to the midi synth or the vg 8 by way of the gk-2, however they do go to the boss sy300. Makes for a monster synth guitar. I generally will send all the midi synths to the sy-300 to take advantage of the osc and fx sections. Modulating and triggering the sy-300 osc's with complex waveforms along with the 8 string makes for some unique synth tones. And because i am an overconsumer, i'm looking at buying that fretless 11 string godin nylon and hitting the sy unit with it. While 5 of those strings are doubled up, it may be interesting to tune one of each of those doubled string sets to fifths.