Few players have done more to popularise the Ibanez seven-string guitar than Brian ‘Head’ Welch and James ‘Munky’ Shaffer, and the Korn guitarists have unveiled an all-new collaboration with the Japanese brand with Yin and Yang-themed signature guitars.
Schaffer has the K7YIN, all in a smooth satin Matte Black finish, ebony fingerboard to match. Welch has the K7YANG, finished with a Matte White with natural back and sides and gold hardware.
Both have some serious hardware choices, with Welch’s new signature model debuting an EverTune 7 bridge, and Shaffer deploying a Lo-Pro Edge 7 double-locking vibrato with a U-bar, which does much the same things as a whammy bar – divebombs, squeals, all that fun stuff – but with quite a different action.
There is a lot of shared DNA in these guitars. Both have the K-7 series name inlaid at the 12th fret and that’s that as far as your fingerboard markers go. Minimalist. But you’ve got dots down the side.
Both guitars have DiMarzio Blaze humbuckers in the neck and bridge positions, selected by a three-way blade-style selector switch, and you’ll find volume and tone knobs on Shaffers, just a single volume on Welch’s.
The bodies are solid nyatoh. The necks are five-piece maple-and-walnut Wizard builds, which means they’re super skinny, measuring just 19mm deep at the 1st fret. The scale length is a regular 25.5” so we are very much talking about a guitar that retains a lot of inspiration from the one that inspired it, Steve Vai’s Ibanez Universe, albeit we have some updated contouring on the bodies of these 2025 models.
As Welch explains in the demo video, it was Shaffer’s idea to use seven-string guitars in Korn. He turned him onto them and has has Steve Vai to thank for planting the seed. Listening to Passion And Warfare, Shaffer thought the Universe hat untapped rhythmic potential.
“It was because of the Passion And Warfare album. When Steve introduced the Universe guitar, and I was listening to it and, creatively, one of my all-time favourite albums, but it didn’t really capture what I was hoping to hear,” says Shaffer. “So I’m like, ‘Okay, if I could get one of those guitars, and do some rhythmic stuff with it on those low notes, it would really sound different.’”
Shaffer getting his hands on the Universe changed popular music. It changed how electric guitars would be used in metal.
“We had written a bunch of songs on seven-string guitar, I had one [Universe] and then we bought another one,” says Shaffer, pointing to the O.G. Universes in the background.
“When I joined, it was all seven-string,” continues Welch. “We just dove straight, head-first. Every song was written on seven-string. I mean, we went from Predictable, we did Alive, Blind, of course, Daddy, and we were like, the seven-string, that’s what we need to make our sound… Every song has to be on the low string.”
Flash-forward to 2025, and the Yin and Yang concept for the pair of them came together because, well, these guys are a 2-in-1 deal. You will always see them onstage together. Why not have guitars that complement each other?
“It was kind of this natural collab of us and Ibanez thinking, ‘Well what about a Yin and a Yang, a dark and a light?’ A lot of our music is like that, where we shade it with darkness, and brighten it with melody,” says Shaffer. “That was pretty much the concept of the Yin and Yang.”
“It reminds my of Batman and the Joker,” says Welch. “It’s just so cool.”
The K7YIN and K7YANG are available now, priced $1,999, and the price includes a gig bag. See Ibanez for more details.
