Just spotted this one on the Twitter feed of Laurie Monk from Truth In Shredding. If you haven’t bookmarked Truth In Shredding yet, go do it now then come back here. I’m not going anywhere.

You back? Ok.

Tony MacAlpine has left Carvin for Ibanez. A July 2 statement on his website says:

Tony has joined the Ibanez family and will now be playing Ibanez 6, 7, and 8-string guitars exclusively.

“It’s a real honor to be part of the Ibanez endorsee family,” said Tony, “and I’m looking forward to breaking out the 7 and 8-strings on the road!”

8-strings huh? Cool! I still haven’t been able to get my hands on an 8-string but an Ibanez RG2228 is at the top of my wish list ($1,799.99 at Musician’s Friend). Hopefully having a player such as Tony rockin’ the 8 will encourage Ibanez to keep making them for years to come (and maybe even expand the range). I wrote a little wrap-up of production-model 8-strings a few months ago. You can read it HERE.

The 7-string guitar Tony has in the pic appears to be an Ibanez S7320 with replacement pickups that look like DiMarzios (the stock Ibanez model has Ibanez-made pickups with black pole pieces). See it HERE, where you can buy it for $699.999 from Musician’s Friend.