8 strings for jazz and cleans?

Hertz32

Has anyone got any experience with using the extended range of an 8 string guitar in jazz? or even just clean stuff in general... Is there somewhere you can get chord charts for them?

Megii

I think you might well be having to pioneer and write your own chord charts on that one, and of course it would depend on how you tuned it. I've sometimes thought I'd like to try a 7 string (I play jazz), and an 8 string - wow that would have some possibilities. I guess I might tune it with an additional low A and E string at the bottom, so that it covered down to the same range as a 4 string bass. I do know there are jazz-oriented books for 7 string guitar, with a low A tuning.

Hertz32

Brilliant! Bucket used to be the jazz guitarist for our school Jazz band with his Jazzmaster, the likelihood of me replacing him directly is fairly slim, but I might have to get a hold of an 8 string agile and see about getting good at playing it! probably have to ask mojo or Weasel to wind me a lower output set of Pickups. Would certainly sound unique!

Deijavoo

The first 8 string I ever seen was aimed at non-metal players. It was in guitarist and got plenty praise, cue "if only Eric Johnson got his hands on this..." 

It was the late 90s if I remember correctly. 

I've always wanted an 8 string 335.  Mmmmmm.....

Megii

I think if I ever go extended range I will probably just go to 7 strings with a low A. Doing that, a lot of the 5th string root chords you already know can be quickly adapted by switching the root to the 7th string, on the same fret. If you had an 8 string with a low E, there would be the same easy relationship between the 6th and 8th strings. But I fear you'd need a fairly chunky scale length to make that work really well, not sure if I could handle the finger stretching lol.

ChrisMusic

Thats absolutely right, you have a lot of other useful tuning options for 8 string depending what you are looking to achieve with it.

Have a think on that issue, as it obviously has a bearing on chord charts etc.

Check out other users, like Tosin Abasi, and including the sublime Alex Hutchings who has his own signature 8 string made by Waghorn in Bristol.  Both use tunings for different reasons.

Well worth thinking about and researching.

Hope that helps         (rather than confuses)