The history and anecdotes of SSO and sevenstrings

[Sumsar]

Hi!

I watched a YT vid from James Hoffman about the history of speciality coffee since the 90's, and going through what has ben in and out at certain times and it got me thinking we could together do something like it for this forum in particular and sevenstring guitars in general.

I have been around on this forum for quite some years now, but many of your have been here even longer, so please chime in!

A timeline might go something like this (I might completely wrong about the years here):

1990
Steve Vai and Ibanez launches the first commercial 7 string electric guitar

1991 - 2000
Korn, Meshuggah and Morbid Angel popularize 7 strings for metal, all using Ibanez Universes pretty much. Maybe call it first wave of 7 string metal bands?

2000? - 2005
Second wave of 7 string bands and albums emerge, e.g. Nevermore with Dead Heart In a Dead World, same era Petrucci starts using 7 strings

2004
Sevenstring.org is started (From what I can tell). Does anyone remember what was the typical topics back then?

2005 - 2010
EMG707s and abalone on everything?

2008 - 2015
Just get a used Prestige and a 5150?

2008 - 2013
1 man custom builders, hype, 1 year waiting list and scandals

2010 - 2015
The first metal guitar youtubers take off, who also somewhat started on this forum? Ola, Keith Merrow and Bulb?

2010 - 2021
Headless guitars make a big comeback, led on by Strandberg, and Ibanez starts making a mass produced headless in 2021

2010? - 2020?
Carvin and Keisel merge, a lot of love, a lot of hate and a looot of bevels.

2015? - 2020?
People started moving more to facebook and reddit, the oldschool forums was past its hayday?

2015 - 2025
Everyone and their mom gets a signature pickup? Also fishman fluence is a very big topic on this forum

2020 - 2025?
What have we been discussing mostly for the last five years ?

A couple of things of things I don't have specific times for:
- The tonewood debate (was that like 2010 or 2015 started by guitar youtubers or did it start before that?)
- When did people generally agree that hipshot bridges was 'the best' over floyds and TOMs for 7 string metal guitar?
- When did people start to agree on the 'best' scalelength (26"5 - 27"?) for metal guitars? I guess the 1990 where all 25"5 guitars?
- When was the change to mostly passives on 7 strings?

Pleas include more topics that come to mind!

 

[eaeolian]

Petrucci started using 7s in 1994, for starters.

 

[Werecow]

Feels like 2020 - 2025 Is the price of gear and where it was made. Also, helping Vejichan get his 6-string guitar for drop C.

 

[KentBrockman]

2021 onwards (but likely before) is the era of being disappointed by the current lineup of Ibanez Prestiges and me asking for an RG3120 reissue.

 

[Drew]

2004
Sevenstring.org is started (From what I can tell). Does anyone remember what was the typical topics back then?

I mean, all of those threads still exist. Some of them are still stickies.

 

[jaxadam]

2004
Sevenstring.org is started (From what I can tell). Does anyone remember what was the typical topics back then?

@Drew ’s pink polo

 

[Drew]

@Drew ’s pink polo

Probably purchased '05 or so, used to, and I quote, "bang mad bitches" through 07-08 or so before gradually being retired, and by '12 or so had made it to goodwill, I think.

It was from L.L. Bean, if anyone wants their own.

 

[Drew]

1990
Steve Vai and Ibanez launches the first commercial 7 string electric guitar

First commercial solidbody electric, I think.

 

[Mboogie7]

Feels like 2020 - 2025 Is the price of gear and where it was made. Also, helping Vejichan get his 6-string guitar for drop C.

LOOOOL

 

[Crungy]

It was before my time but I think the full lore of Djod needs to be in this.

 

[gabito]

People were talking a lot about socks just yesterday.

 

[Emperoff]

2004
Sevenstring.org is started (From what I can tell). Does anyone remember what was the typical topics back then?

Pink Polos, Blaze or Blaze Custom?, Nevermore, Mesa Boogie, "I'd buy it if it wasn't rosewood", all bald people on the internet was Noodles

A couple of things of things I don't have specific times for:
- The tonewood debate (was that like 2010 or 2015 started by guitar youtubers or did it start before that?)
- When did people generally agree that hipshot bridges was 'the best' over floyds and TOMs for 7 string metal guitar?
- When did people start to agree on the 'best' scalelength (26"5 - 27"?) for metal guitars? I guess the 1990 where all 25"5 guitars?
- When was the change to mostly passives on 7 strings?

Pleas include more topics that come to mind!

1 - The tonewood debate never went away.
2 - People don't agree on anything. TOMs blow, but I'd never say everyone agrees on that.
3 - Same as above. I prefer 25.5" over 27" any day of the week.
4 - When Bare Knuckle entered the game and the djentboys started the hypemachine.

 

[tecs99]

while its true reddit and facebook have their own flavor of community, i much respect the one here. Lots of OG's, interesting topics, all sorts of news, it's unique.

 

[BusinessMan]

2020-2024- mick Thomson being a brand hopper, fishmans are ass/great, WHERE TF ARE EII MADE, price bitching.

As a personal thing I’ve noticed is that guitar manufacturers are finally making things that I seemingly want to buy.

These are easily continued into 2025.

 

[nightsprinter]

It was from L.L. Bean, if anyone wants their own.

Been wanting this 1 for a hot minute

 

[wheresthefbomb]

make sure not to leave out the colonoscopy thread

 

[crushingpetal]

It was before my time but I think the full lore of Djod needs to be in this.

I second this. Edgeumukate the younguns, please.

 

[Xaios]

I second this. Edgeumukate the younguns, please.

They shall know the old ways. All hail Djod.

One other random tidbit of lore: once upon a time there was a second off-topic forum devoted to "serious discussion", and it wasn't just the P&CE forum but a whole, separate thing of its own. I think it was called The Lounge? One of the forum's true elder statesmen should be able to corroborate this.

Also, some of the specific details about the... uh,  challenges of specific single-man or small shop luthiers deserve to be remembered, such as Strictly 7's wormholes and Roter's wonky fanned fret.

 

[tedtan]

Going back before 1990, but the first 7 string production guitar was the Gretsch George Van EPS model, released in 1968.

Douchebag “Maestro” Alex Gregory claims to have invented the 7 string guitar, and may have actually had a prototype 7 string Fender Strat circa 1988. I don’t know that his “signature” models were ever produced, they may well have been custom shop one offs.

Early SSO was much busier than it is today, with topics ranging all over the map. Back then, we had 20 pages of discussions per day. Today we get maybe two or three.

We even gave birth to djent with Bulb posting his early demos here. I remember Nolly and one of the Tesseract guys posting back in the day, too. And Per from Scar Symmetry used to join discussions from time to time. Bare Knuckle pickups became a massive trend for a while, as did the Axe FX. And even after he became successful, Bulb was here schilling his latest endorsement left and right with djent fans fawning over his every word. The trend around djent (not the music, the trend) got pretty annoying for a while.

There’s a lot more, but that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.


EDIT: And DJOD! @Xaios can enlighten us about Djod and Nega-SSO circa 2010 or 2012.

 

[tedtan]

Also, custom guitars! We had a five to ten year period where everyone HAD to have a customer guitar. And this led to so many crappy guitar by “luthiers” who had no business working with wood: poor fret work, frets in the wrong location, bridges misplaced, just junk. I couldn’t believe that people were ordering some of these things.

And there was a whole group of luthiers (Vik, Sabre, et. al.) building custom guitars that never even delivered them, and even bigger names like Bernie Rico Jr. (BRJ Guitars, formerly of BC Rich). It was a cluster fuck inside of a shit show there for a while.