Baby 9

ESP collaborated with Baby Metal to give you this 9-string beast. Love the single pickup feature but if you wish to tread this path, be informed that the 9-string sets are not readily available in the market.

Ibanez: RG90

Bare Knuckles are into the 9 bandwagon early. Here's an Ibanez Prestige featuring a set of Canine humbuckers. It's definitely good to know an established name being at the forefront of change. But as it is with Ibanez, whichever name they flirt with, they keep coming back to DiMarzio.  Time will tell.

Nines- want?

Here is Schecter's C9...

Not to be out-done by Ibanez's RG9.

Well, do you need a 9th string? Majority of us would be bent on adding a thicker, bottom end but let's embrace the fact that adding a thinner plain string would work as well. There's no established conventions here, you go with your needs. Also, are strings for a 9-string guitar readily available off the shelves? From the 8-string experience, strings were hard to come by till much later when more manufacturers are into the 8. Even at the initial stages, they got it wrong (D'Addario).

The guitars above represent a firm performer differing in their respective turfs. The Schecter is active with a non-bolt neck while the Ibanez is its complete opposite. I'm one to embrace a fresh outlook in music but such a deviation would only be meaningful with complementaries; amps, effects, drivers, etc. should be moving along with this development because as it is with the 8 experience, there's just too much waiting.

I have tried the C9 when it was still around at Davis GMC but wasn't moved to buy it simply because it doesn't sound convincing with the amps it was plugged into (I'm not exclusively talking about distortion, here. Cleans are also acquired taste with a 9). 

Anyway, are they gonna add more strings so that guitars would spill into the chapman stick territory? Hmm...

Ibanez 2013: Proto 9

This is the talk of NAMM 2013- an Ibanez 9-string! But hold on, folks... it's only a prototype.