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don ’ t like mentioning company names but this company got bought out by Fender and after that happened it wasn ’ t very cool . Then Ibanez called and I went with them and I was happy to go with them because I ’ d been playing Ibanez 7 strings before that and then when I got the call from Dean it was an obvious , hey yes ! Yes , let ’ s do this because the prior company wasn ’ t interested in any of my design ideas . They didn ’ t want to do anything to change how their guitars looked and when I got with Dean my Dean the RC 7,8 & 6 ’ s were designed to the very last details down to my specs down to volume , knob placement , pickups to the cutaway neck thickness , fret size I mean every detail of my guitar . I mean that ’ s how they believed in my ideas . The previous company wouldn ’ t listen to my ideas and a year after my guitar came out the previous company started putting out with a guitar with my ideas on them it ’ s like oh , I get it !
Was this Ibanez ?
No I ’ m trying not to name names it ’ s the best thing to do when you ’ re with a company , they don ’ t want to hear me saying other companies ’ names and I understand that
I got you
When ’ s the RC 9 coming out ?
I don ’ t know about that yet because I ’ ve already had a 9 string and I wasn ’ t really that happy with it because when you have a high A to a low B you must have a fan fret I ’ m not sure if you ’ ve seen , do you know what I ’ m talking about fan fret ?
And if you go any lower that means the fan must be even greater so I ’ m not sure that a greater fan for a high A to something below an F sharp I don ’ t think , what I would want with a 9-string guitar would be high A to low F sharp . That would be my version of a 9 string because I don ’ t want to go lower than an F sharp it ’ s just like bass town . I ’ m not sure the technology is there for it yet because the 9 string that I had been 23.5 to a 26.5 and that ’ s a good fan and the low string was still just too floppy and I wasn ’ t happy with the pickups but this is way more before anyone else did anything like that . I did the 9 string in like , I did my first 8 string in 2001 I think and I did my 9 string during like 2004 or 2005
You were doing 7 strings in ’ 95 & ’ 96 weren ’ t you ?
In ’ 96 I got my first 7 string yes and when I got that , I put up my 6 ’ s and never looked back . I started playing the 8 string with the high A because all the classical influences the violin stuff . There ’ s no way to get up in that violin range and play some of those classical lines and I didn ’ t even know that such a thing existed and a friend of mine sent me a web link with these guitars and I said oh , I ’ ve got to have one of those . As far as innovativeness goes I think the high A string is much more challenging than playing a low F sharp model . With low F sharp model you can still have standard straight frets and when you go down to the low F sharp you just change on the same fret you know but when you have a high A string you ’ ve got that B string transference so that shifts everything over one and plus you ’ ve got one more string above that throws everything off a little , it ’ s much harder to grasp than learn how to play fluently than it is to go into one lower string and most of the guys that play low F sharp string aren ’ t doing anything really innovative with it , it ’ s just rhythmic stuff which that ’ s cool but it ’ s not really challenging taking the instrument to some place new
Yes
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