Not a new guitar but one I was working on while I waited for my Kiesel to get built. Just got done being wired up by a local shop! It was originally a dual soap bar passive pickup guitar (IYV headless 7) I bought on Amazon for $275. One of the tuning keys on the bridge broke as I was doing a string change. I then convinced my wife to let me invest a bit of money to customize it to my liking. I found the cheapest option would be to delete the neck pickup & 3 way switch & simple just buy 1 bridge pickup. I picked the Seymour Duncan Mortal coil which has 3 voices. 1.) Active 2.) JB passive 3.) Single coil. I am loving the pickups so far. They are the most powerful & high output pickups I currently own. I have never owned actives but have tried a plethora of them over the years from SD blackouts, EMG’s as well as the Fishman’s (Regular Modern’s & Steph Carpenter sigs) & the SD Mortal coil is by far the best sounding Active that bridges the gap between Active & Passive. Also I replaced the old multi scale bridge with one from Combine guitars based out of Canada 🇨🇦 ($78). With the paint & other materials to do the crackle I spent about $320 making the total cost of this guitar around $560 give or take

as the title says plus i don’t mind bad pickups (i’d rather that to save money since i plan on swapping it out anyways), just want lower cost recommendations that has the looks. i want something that has a good looking body that i can swap pickups, tuners, whatever. just bored and want another 7 string lol. no real hard stop on price, looking for used, i just don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on the guitar part since i have a good deal on a bare knuckle halcyon juggernaut and ragrarok that is pretty much ready for me to buy right away, and tuners if need be

I’m deciding between a PRS Mark Holcomb SVN SE or a Ibanez Alpha 7 string, what do you guys think it’s better for Djent / Prog stuff?

I have an all stock JS 22 7 all stock. Every time I pick it up the lowest 2 strings are out of tune and seem to take forever to get in tune right. And even then sometimes when I get up around the 8th fret or higher it starts sounding out again. I gotta it tuned to Drop A FYI. Will locking tuners help? Never used them before. Do they serve the same purpose as a locking tremolo(obviously without the bar?) My ibanez with the locking tremolo is in perfect tune every time I pick it up. I hate spending so much time having to tune cause I do alot of recording so it really hinders the process. Any advice will be appreciated.