Spira S507-QGYE Review: Can a £500 Seven-String Really Be This Good?

Seven-string guitars with this kind of spec don’t usually sit at the affordable end of the market, which is exactly what makes the Spira S507-QGYE so interesting. At just over £500 at the time of review, you’re getting a roasted Canadian maple neck, a 26.5-inch scale length, locking tuners, 24 huge frets, custom ceramic humbuckers and a quilted maple veneer. Oh, and obviously an entire extra string. That’s a fairly ridiculous amount of guitar for the money.

I’m not someone who spends every waking hour on a seven-string, so what surprised me most was how quickly the S507-QGYE stopped feeling unfamiliar. Yes, the neck is wider than your average six-string — there’s not much Spira can do about the laws of physics — but the modern D profile and 14-inch radius keep it feeling very manageable.

The longer 26.5-inch scale adds a little extra tension for a given string gauge, which makes perfect sense on an extended-range guitar, but it never feels excessive. The 24 large frets help here too. They’re exactly the sort of fretwire I like on a modern guitar, giving you plenty to get underneath when bending and making the neck feel surprisingly easy to get around.

Spira has also done something genuinely clever with the fret markers. In the lower octave, they’re positioned closer to the bass strings, while further up the neck they move towards the treble side. It sounds like the sort of tiny detail you’d barely notice on a spec sheet, but when you’re not completely at home on a seven-string neck, it really does help you keep track of where you are.

The fretboard is made from what Spira calls “Ebony Tech”. It looks like ebony, but it isn’t actually ebony, and that’s presumably one of the ways Spira has managed to keep the price where it is. Whether you think that makes any meaningful difference to the sound of a high-gain seven-string is a debate I’m more than happy to leave to the internet. Visually, though, it works very well.

The roasted Canadian maple neck leads into a reverse headstock that manages to look suitably aggressive without feeling like a copy of something we’ve seen a thousand times before. Designing a new pointy metal headstock that doesn’t look either boring or completely ridiculous is harder than it sounds, but Spira has done a good job here. The matching maple veneer is a nice touch too.

The reverse layout does take a little getting used to when tuning if you’re not familiar with one, but that’s very much an adaptation issue rather than a problem with the guitar. Spira’s own locking tuners are excellent: compact, lightweight and operated with simple thumbscrews. Crucially, they don’t add loads of unnecessary mass to the headstock, so neck dive isn’t an issue.

Unfortunately, the factory setup on this particular guitar wasn’t as impressive. The action arrived really high and needed some attention before the instrument played as well as it should. I’ve played other Spira guitars that were absolutely fine out of the box, so I’m reluctant to suggest this is a wider problem, but it’s worth mentioning. Thankfully, we’re talking about a bit of setup work rather than anything fundamentally wrong with the guitar.

The body is a three-piece mahogany construction with through-body stringing and a bolt-on neck. The heel is nicely carved away, which gives you excellent access to the upper frets, and the strap button has been positioned in a way that helps the guitar sit naturally when you’re standing.

There is a small trade-off here: if you’re the sort of player who likes to lean back while playing seated, the strap button can dig into your ribs slightly. On a strap, though, the positioning makes a lot of sense and keeps the guitar sitting comfortably.

The quilted maple on the front looks excellent, although Spira’s description deserves a small clarification. It’s referred to as a maple “cap”, but it’s actually a thin veneer rather than a full-thickness maple top. Whether a full maple cap would sprinkle some magical extra brightness into the tone is another argument for another day; what matters here is that the veneer looks great.

Electronics are pleasingly simple, with one volume control, one tone control and a three-way pickup selector feeding a pair of Spira Villain ceramic humbuckers. They’re listed at 12K on the website, although the pickups in the review guitar measured 13.4K and 8.3K respectively. More importantly, they balance very nicely in practice.

The bridge pickup is fat and growly, while the neck pickup has a lovely character for lead tones. Perhaps more surprisingly, the middle position is genuinely useful away from the heavier stuff. With both humbuckers running together, you get a clear, open and slightly clangy sound that works particularly well for cleaner tones and even bluesier playing.

There is one slightly strange omission. These are four-conductor pickups, meaning they’re capable of coil splitting, but Spira hasn’t actually wired them that way. I’d have liked to see a push-pull tone pot or perhaps an automatic split in the middle position. It’s something you could add yourself later, but considering the pickups are already capable of doing it, it feels like a missed opportunity.

Even the otherwise conventional seven-saddle stop-tail bridge hides a clever little detail. There are two sets of holes for the saddle screws, giving you extra adjustment if you want to lower the action further or need more room to intonate particularly heavy strings. It’s not the sort of feature that’s going to sell the guitar on its own, but it shows that some thought has gone into how an extended-scale seven-string is actually going to be used.

And that’s really what makes the Spira S507-QGYE so appealing. It isn’t flawless — the factory action on this particular example needed sorting, and I’d happily take a coil split — but those are relatively small complaints when you look at what you’re getting.

For players who have been curious about seven strings but put off by the price normally attached to this sort of specification, the S507-QGYE is a very convincing entry point. It’s comfortable, sounds good, feels thoughtfully designed and offers an enormous amount of guitar for just over £500. That’s difficult to argue with.

Find out more about the Spira S507-QGYE at Spira Guitars