.Strandberg* Boden OS7 — my Perfect Guitar

In my previous post I promised to write about the .strandberg* guitar I had ordered. It definitely deserved a separate post. I’m going to share all my thoughts on the .strandberg* Boden OS7: all the upsides and downsides I found, how I fixed what I didn’t like in it, and how I eventually made a perfect guitar for myself.

A short disclaimer: this post is my personal opinion, and nobody paid me to write this.

First Introduction to .strandberg* #

I can’t remember when I saw a .strandberg* guitar for the first time, but I definitely do remember where. Have you heard of Sarah Longfield? If not, you should check her YouTube channel out; she is an awesome musician and she plays an 8-string custom-made .strandberg* guitar, which looks fantastic. I was truly amazed by the guitar’s body shape, its bridge system, and, of course, the headless neck, which looked unique and weird to me at that time.

But I made my final decision to order a .strandberg* guitar when I watched this video where Sarah told more about her custom guitar and about its neck shape in particular. The neck shape is called “The EndurNeck”, you can read more about it here. Basically, it’s a trapezoid shape that leads your thumb all the way up and down the frets. This shape is supposed to be very ergonomic and comfortable to play. I got incredibly curious about this. I went to the .strandberg* website for the first time and decided to order a Boden OS7 (the cheapest mass-production model; even picked a discounted unit).

Getting Started with .strandberg* #

I ordered my guitar from the European website on December 9th. This website delivers to Germany (the company itself is based in Sweden). At that time the website was pretty much out of stock for 6-string mass-production guitars; they had only one model in black color which I found too boring.

I took a look at their 7-string guitars and found a purple Boden OS7 with an almost 400 euro discount. Purple is my favorite color (can you tell?), and I always wanted to try a 7-string. Well, the choice was obvious to me.

This guitar was delivered to me from Sweden in 7 days, on December 16th.

In the box you would find a very high-quality gig bag and the guitar itself inside the bag. Additionally, there are some tools and a factory checklist with a signature of the person responsible for quality control of the guitar.

If I got it right, it had a company-branded string set installed on it but I personally didn’t like it. I tried to install D’Addario NYXL1164 right away (just something I had laying around). This set turned out to be a bit too thick for the guitar and I later switched to Ernie Ball 2620 11–58 (despite the purple packaging color I chose them for their sound, I swear!). This time it was a perfect fit.

What I Liked #

Body #

The body shape was perfect!

It’s convenient to play in any position you can imagine. The output jack is located in a very convenient place (image below), and I don’t even notice the cable’s presence when it’s plugged in.

The body is extremely lightweight; I think it’s even lighter than my Ibanez S-series guitar. The specs say the body is chambered, so it’s mostly empty inside.

The knobs are made of ebony which saves some weight as well (if you compare them to metal ones).

Bridge #

The system is brilliant! You just turn a knob on the bridge to adjust the pitch of each string, or you unscrew it all the way in order to pull out the string and replace it. There is a cool tutorial video where it’s explained how to also adjust the action height and intonation.

I found this system very stable. By this I mean it keeps in tune after weeks of playing. Very impressive!

Neck #

The neck is very comfortable to play. It has fanned frets, though. It can cause some trouble when you bend strings too far and itwould take some time to adjust, but after some time I didn’t notice them anymore.

The locking nut is very easy to use; no problem here. Just be careful not to overtighten it. Otherwise, it bites through the string and cuts it.

The glowing-in-the-dark fret markings are great and can be useful on stage, for example.

I also liked the truss rod adjustment – it’s very easily accessible. You don’t have to do much compared to most other guitars where you have to loosen a couple of strings and/or remove a plastic shield. +1 to the headless design.

What I Didn’t Like #

Pickups #

From the factory the guitar had EMG 707X pickups installed on it.

I was very disappointed by the sound they produce. It sounded very artificial and filtered and had short sustain. I did my best to create an appropriate preset on my FX chain but had no luck. I still didn’t like it. Compared with my Ibanez SIX6FDFM the sound was much worse.

So, I decided to replace the pickups. More about that below.

Adjustment Process #

Not a big deal really because ideally you need to do it only once, but it was really inconvenient to adjust intonation and action due to the bridge design. First, you have to loosen each string completely, change the intonation/action height, and then tighten it again. When you’re trying to find a perfect point it can be annoying to repeat this procedure over and over again.

Changing pickups #

As I mentioned above, the sound was disappointing, and I decided to get rid of the active EMG pickups. So, after some research, I chose the Seymour Duncan Nazgul/Sentient set and this wiring scheme:

Which gives us, basically, these switching options:

I got the same wiring with my Ibanez SIX6FDFM and I very liked it.

A little rant: I personally don’t understand why manufacturers keep putting tone knobs on their guitars. I suspect it leads to losing a part of the signal in it. I think you can do anything you need in the FX chain, and the tone knob is a waste. But, of course, it’s only my personal preference. So, the plan was to replace the tone knob with the coil-split switch.

After a couple of evenings and with my wife’s help we finished wiring the new circuit replacing almost everything.

I’ve installed the Seymour Duncan Liberator volume knob. It allows you to reinstall pickups in the future without soldering at all. That’s what I’ve got as a result:

The new sound truly amazed me. It turned out the EMG pickups had been hiding the true potential of this guitar as I suspected: the new tone was outstanding, nothing to compare with what it had before. In fact, this was the best sound I’ve ever heard, and it became my favorite instrument eventually. Maybe I’m a little biased because of my time investment with rewiring, but I love it, and that’s what’s important to me.

Was it worth it? #

Definitely! I would say, if you can’t find a perfect guitar, you could try to build it.

For me it worked pretty well, as you can see. I found a good source material and made some modifications to fix what I didn’t like. Don’t be afraid of experiments, and maybe it will turn out to be the best thing you’ve ever done.