7 stringed guitars were rather popular in earlier days. But – my theory – the more and more industrial manufacturing of guitars has led to the fact, that those individual guitars have disapeared more and more.
There are many transcriptions of music for guitars with 7 strings even if they are something one has to search for. To me it was a challenge to make such an instrument. And as it is my duty as a self taught luthier, I had to do my own concept and implement my own ideas. All based on my prooved concept. I wanted to gain the most out of the additional 7th string and reach a high level of flexibility with it. The most important thing was to get it easily tuned and allow intesive use of it.
I got influenced by a guitar of Urs Langebacher who made the 7th string longer by two frets on one of his instruments. So I decided to go for additional 3 frets. So the empty string could be tuned in b and it should be easily changed to tune it in C, C sharp or D by the use of a clamp. The result of my construction is surprising in tow different ways: First, the string can – as it was planned – very easliy be changed in tune by this clamp construction and as long as the player keeps the open string in B, it can always be played as a D string. But by changing the tuning of the open string, the player can change the way the 7th lies beneath the 6th independently from the open string tune. Additionally to that, by the overall length of more than 77 cm the string sounds very soft and strong and one can use a normal 7/D string. So the sound and playability of the 7th extend the guitar in a very good way.
