Heavy-Style Electric Guitars

Heavy Style Guitars

Heavy Style guitars are especially designed for heavy music styles (Hardrock, Metal, Hardcore and others) regarding their type of construction, design and playability.

The forefathers of Heavy Style guitars are undoubtedly the Flying V and the Explorer. Gibson put these on the market as early as 1958. When Hardrock was flourishing in the 70ies a lot of guitarists started to discover these instruments. When heavy music started to evolve into more and more extreme directions, guitar companies were formed that developed specific guitars for these particular styles of music. Besides the models mentioned above, there are designs like the Mockingbird, the Warlock or several Stratocaster-inspired designs.

The overall design of Heavy Style guitars reflects the aggression and speed of the musical genres they are used for. There are a lot of iconic guitar players like Kerry King (Slayer), Michael Schenker (Scorpions), James Hetfield (Metallica), Abbath (Immortal), Pat O'Brien (Cannibal Corpse) or Dimebag Darrell (Pantera) that made these kinds of guitars famous.

Heavy Style guitars are usually equipped with potent humbuckers and their choice of wood and type of construction are especially suited to produce a massive amount of power, loudness and sustain. Meanwhile there are many seven or eight stringed instruments among those guitars which can be used to realise extreme tunings and techniques.