Review : Strandberg Boden 8 String
My very good friend Peter Waldon of Cosmo Music said that he thought that bassists were far more open to different shapes and styles of instruments than guitar players. I think he may be right, but I hope not because then guitarists could be intentionally missing some very cool stuff.
Strandberg guitars are not new, but they are definitely not widely found. I had to go to Montreal to find mine in stock. Thanks to Mark at Musique Max Boutique for all the assistance in making this my own.
Eight string and to a lesser extent, seven string guitars have been more favoured by metal players than others, partly for the super deep bass capability. I am not a metal player. It's not my thing, so one of the first questions I asked is if this guitar was built only for metal. It's not. Metal players will love it, but so will other players looking for more creative opportunity. Thus while my guitar is called a Metal 8, it's not solely for metal. In fact, it's very cool for all styles of music from classic rock to jazz and even country because of the bass counterpoint capability.
The guitar has 8 strings as you can see, and the factory tuning is F#, B, E, A, D, G, B, E. Other tunings are your choice of course, but this tuning is very easy to adapt to, your chord shapes and scales are readily extensible, and of course you have an extended range over your standard six string.
I had tried a different 8 string that was not a multi-scale variant and did not care for its sound or feel. While the fretboard is very wide, the multi scale layout which gives the bass strings a longer length than the high strings, with frets placed accordingly is incredibly easy to adapt to. It happens nearly automatically, at least in my case.
The neck shape is completely unique, and it does take a bit of getting used to. Instead of a curve, it is a series of planes. If you don't think about it too much, your thumb just goes where it needs to as you move up and down the neck and across the fretboard. Yes, it feels odd at first, but in my case, by choosing to not resist the difference, I became quite comfortable with the very different neck profile very quickly.
That the Boden 8 is a headless guitar makes for incredible balance. The body is all about function first. The body design facilitates playing the guitar in a variety of different positions that gives enormous flexibility to the player. I broke both wrists when I was in my teens and find that I need to keep a guitar neck at a higher angle than is common. The Boden 8 delivers this position with ease and stability.
The pickups are Fishman Fluence units. They sound amazing, definitely distinct and very pleasing indeed. I've been playing this guitar primarily as I am exploring ambient music and there is something completely unique about the sounds that I get. I am a great distance from competence, but have found having the deep bass capability that I am weaving drone tones into my alleged compositions. For those who want to shred, the neck works for that very well as we see in the hands of players like Sarah Longfield and Tosin Abasi. I am no shredder, either in skill or interest, but for those who are, this guitar provides the layout and the sounds to make it happen.
My initial play tests were done with my small Blackstar HT-5 head and cab for volume management reasons. This is also the rig where I test different pedals, so I used a lot of different pedals with the guitar and the amp on its clean American voice. Using the Wampler Tumnus Deluxe gives a wonderful overdriven voice, and for those rare (for me) distortion occasions, Frost Giant's The Mountain sounded great. For delay and reverb I have played the Boden 8 through Keeley's Cavern and for chorus, both the Diamond Halo and a Walrus Audio Julia have been used. I have played it with an without my Diamond Jr compressor, and as I expected, because I am an admitted compressor dork, I like the compressor always on. I also have a Boss EQ-200 on the board, but have only kicked it in for experimentation so far, the sound out of the guitar being excellent in my opinion.
The output jack is in a strange place, on the back in a recess, not as oddly placed as on a Brian Moore C90 but not on the body edge. I was happy to discover that the Boss WL-10 wireless transmitter fits in this notch, just.
It's new and so I have not had to change the strings, but have noted that NYXLs exist for the guitar. Tuning is like a Steinberger with knobs down at the bridge. Like a Steinberger, tuning requires precise finger gripping of the tuner, and the eight strings may mean you grab the wrong tuner from time to time. I also learned that a lot of traditional guitar tuners have no idea how to deal with the 8 strings. There's really no place to clip a Snark anyway, and I have found that the new Peterson Strobostomp works perfectly with this instrument.
When folks look at the guitar in photos, they expect something monstrous. It's actually very lightweight and relatively small. It comes with a decent gig-bag, although for the cost of a Boden Metal 8 at around $2831 CAD, I would have much preferred a hardshell case.
The Strandberg Boden Metal 8 is, for me, a real pleasure to play. Now that I am acclimated to the neck, which took very little time, I can play for a long time without the arthritis in my wrists and hands becoming problematic. I have a lot of work to do to learn how to maximize the flexibility that eight strings bring to me, but that's a journey that I am looking forward to.
There are less expensive multi-scale guitars in the market, not many, but they do exist. For me and my use cases, the Strandberg Boden 8 is the best fit.