Ibanez 2019 New Stuff

[A-Branger]

my 300$ acoustic I had (Tanglewood) had a black "eboncore" fretboard. Looked great. Brands should use that for their cheap range instead of the cheap rosewood (or whatever wood used now)

 

[Jonathan20022]

Vigier makes some of the best stuff out there as well, if they adopted Richlite or other composite fretboards I'd jump into one. But they're a very forward thinking company, their trems have features and advancements that you'd expect companies to implement at some point in the last few decades. Their zero fret is segmented and completely replaceable when they do inevitably wear in from the constant string pressure, the 90/10 neck is also amazing and negates the need for a truss rod in their guitars.

There's no shortage of companies looking to innovate, with the rate that fretboards shrink and dry out/crack I'd imagine at least seasoned musicians would be open to composite fretboards. But I've seen some ignorant shit from the more conservative players out there, I just don't take them as seriously when they make claims to their guitars never having all these problems but they don't seem to notice their guitar's relief is mile high and their frets are poking out.

 

[diagrammatiks]

Vigier makes some of the best stuff out there as well, if they adopted Richlite or other composite fretboards I'd jump into one. But they're a very forward thinking company, their trems have features and advancements that you'd expect companies to implement at some point in the last few decades. Their zero fret is segmented and completely replaceable when they do inevitably wear in from the constant string pressure, the 90/10 neck is also amazing and negates the need for a truss rod in their guitars.

There's no shortage of companies looking to innovate, with the rate that fretboards shrink and dry out/crack I'd imagine at least seasoned musicians would be open to composite fretboards. But I've seen some ignorant shit from the more conservative players out there, I just don't take them as seriously when they make claims to their guitars never having all these problems but they don't seem to notice their guitar's relief is mile high and their frets are poking out.

I mean if you only play like 1 note a bar cuz you playing with feel none of this stuff matters.

Just have fun with it.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

my 300$ acoustic I had (Tanglewood) had a black "eboncore" fretboard. Looked great. Brands should use that for their cheap range instead of the cheap rosewood (or whatever wood used now)

Yeah, martin uses richlite on their lower-mid tier acoustics and it's pretty nice. I think taylor also uses it but don't quote me on that.
Plus, richlite comes in all kinds of colors so it opens up a lot of possibilities aesthetically speaking, especially since the material won't fade like the more common colorful woods (purpleheart, padauk, etc).

 

[Dumple Stilzkin]

Yeah, martin uses richlite on their lower-mid tier acoustics and it's pretty nice. I think taylor also uses it but don't quote me on that.
Plus, richlite comes in all kinds of colors so it opens up a lot of possibilities aesthetically speaking, especially since the material won't fade like the more common colorful woods (purpleheart, padauk, etc).

Just imagine what Jeff Kiesel could do with all those new color combinations. WWJKD?

 

[Exchanger]

I understand that people care about aesthetics, but goddamn man. If they dyed Rosewood jet black and then used it as a replacement for Ebony, would half of you even care?

I know I wouldn't

Edit: It would also be great if big CIEs would invest in developing synthetic materials such as arium for their instruments. I never heard an Aristides owner say they missed the tone woods.

The thing with Arium is that I think it's patented and it's kind of what makes Aristides exclusive, and it's supposed to have enhanced sonic properties. Other manufacturers would have to come up with their own materials, which might simply not be worth the investment, or potentiel elgal implications.
Fun coincidence, I found on reverb a cheap fretless bass with a phenolic resin fretboard (practically richlite to) and I'm quite set on buying it.

 

[narad]

The thing with Arium is that I think it's patented and it's kind of what makes Aristides exclusive, and it's supposed to have enhanced sonic properties. Other manufacturers would have to come up with their own materials, which might simply not be worth the investment, or potentiel elgal implications.

The more I think about it, the less it makes sense to be patented. Perhaps the process could be patented, but I imagine there's lots of other methods developed in the past 30 years to create similar composites. Maybe more likely is that there's lots of composites out there, but Aristides just has lots of cool finishes and good marketing

It's like richlite. If Gibson does it, bad, if Aristides does it, great! The big companies probably just know their customers and what is marketable to them (at this time).

 

[Lindmann]

So the days of endless tone-wood debates will be gone soon and we will have our endless tone-resin debates then.

...who's complaining about discussing the same crap over and over again now....huh?

 

[Lindmann]

Inevitable double post

 

[MetalHex]

Not using wood =/= better for the enviroment. Whatever material they use next won't make polluting-smokestacks go away. The art of dyeing itself is supporting the petro-chemical industry.

As Max said wood is renewable. What these companies should do is buy some land and grow wood specifically for harvesting wood materials.....wait they already do that. (Read an artical years ago that talked about tree farms for paper. They said that for every 13 trees harvested, 87 more are planted to take their place and more)

So then maybe what we need to do as customers is start demanding woods that are more abundant even if they are less pleasing to the eye.

 

[lewis]

cant we start scooping up all the worlds plastic and turn them into guitars?

I would happily opt for that over wood everytime if companies started offering production models made from plastic - especially if they had made an effort to go somewhere and clean up places of the Earth.

 

[MetalHex]

cant we start scooping up all the worlds plastic and turn them into guitars?

I would happily opt for that over wood everytime if companies started offering production models made from plastic - especially if they had made an effort to go somewhere and clean up places of the Earth.

Sure but all of that melting plastic and chemical solvents for ink removal and such isnt going to be good for the enviroment.

But yeah if you can remove a huge pile of plastic junk and turn it into new plastic junk then i guess that will be a good thing.

 

[efiltsohg]

High quality rosewood has no tonal or visual comparison (most other woods are noticeably brighter sounding). Maybe people hate rosewood because of the garbage indian stuff on cheap guitars. Maybe people are mistaking wenge/pau ferro/bubinga/whatever else being substituted nowadays for rosewood.

 

[diagrammatiks]

High quality rosewood has no tonal or visual comparison (most other woods are noticeably brighter sounding). Maybe people hate rosewood because of the garbage indian stuff on cheap guitars. Maybe people are mistaking wenge/pau ferro/bubinga/whatever else being substituted nowadays for rosewood.

Oh you must be new here.

 

[DEUCE SLUICE]

Not using wood =/= better for the enviroment. Whatever material they use next won't make polluting-smokestacks go away. The art of dyeing itself is supporting the petro-chemical industry.

As Max said wood is renewable. What these companies should do is buy some land and grow wood specifically for harvesting wood materials.....wait they already do that. (Read an artical years ago that talked about tree farms for paper. They said that for every 13 trees harvested, 87 more are planted to take their place and more)

So then maybe what we need to do as customers is start demanding woods that are more abundant even if they are less pleasing to the eye.

Exactly, there's a big difference sustainability-wise between a fast-growing domestic like maple and rosewood or ebony.

I'm about to take delivery of another bass from Chris Stambaugh, and this time (and everything going forward) I made a conscious effort to spec out only domestic woods: ash neck, walnut body with an alder tone block. The top is from a piece of old-growth redwood that had sunk to the bottom of a river in Mendocino County in the mid-1800's, and the fingerboard is Richlite. This thing is the kind of bass that really needed an ebony board, but I've checked out Richlite across multiple manufacturers and couldn't tell the difference. Chris said it works really well, just is a bit harder on his saw blades.

That said, I suppose it should be a bit like food - make guitars using the woods that are available locally wherever you're making them.

 

[Soya]

But American woods are boring! Africa gets all the cool stuff

 

[Exchanger]

The more I think about it, the less it makes sense to be patented. Perhaps the process could be patented, but I imagine there's lots of other methods developed in the past 30 years to create similar composites. Maybe more likely is that there's lots of composites out there, but Aristides just has lots of cool finishes and good marketing

As far as I know, the story goes like this :
Some guy who's a bit of an inventor (I think his name is Enserink) came up with the material 10-20 years ago and started Catalyst guitars. These look like they could be made out of wood. He then sold the company to someone else who renamed it to Aristides. I don't know if Arium is patented per se but it's definitely their "secret formula", and it's not just some replacement for wood, it's supposed to have better resonance etc... one could argue it's only a marketing thing. When they started out, they didn't have all those fancy finishes, so I wouldn't attribute their success to just that. I would say it's a smart move though, since they're not using wood and couldn't jump on the figured wood trend, they came up with other ways to make eye-candy.

And in the end it's not so easy to do, resins tend to be significantly more dense than wood : making just a fretboard out of resin doesn't affect the weight too much, but a whole instrument ? You would need to come up with a less dense formula that's strong enough, or you need to otherwise lighten the design (hollowing out for example...I once tried such a guitar at the musikmesse like 7 years ago or so, I think it was Flaxwood). Then you have to convince the tonewood boys that your material is better than wood. Again, it probably makes sense for a lot of companies to not even bother and just stick to wood, no need for new techniques, new tools, new marketing...

 

[narad]

As far as I know, the story goes like this :
Some guy who's a bit of an inventor (I think his name is Enserink) came up with the material 10-20 years ago and started Catalyst guitars. These look like they could be made out of wood. He then sold the company to someone else who renamed it to Aristides. I don't know if Arium is patented per se but it's definitely their "secret formula", and it's not just some replacement for wood, it's supposed to have better resonance etc... one could argue it's only a marketing thing. When they started out, they didn't have all those fancy finishes, so I wouldn't attribute their success to just that.

Well, they did bomb originally!

I'll say a 1.5 USD/EUR ratio wasn't helping them out much, but their original market was more TheGearPage, and those guys were not so amenable to the idea nor the results. I also prefer my wood guitars over Aristides in that I often like brighter sounds and Aristides, to me, have a slightly darker Alder-ish sound. I'll say their current market niche really suits their strengths, but I wonder if they'll ever be able to make something that sounds like a great les paul or telecaster (Aristides tele right around the corner rumors would have it...)

 

[MaxOfMetal]

or you need to otherwise lighten the design (hollowing out for example...I once tried such a guitar at the musikmesse like 7 years ago or so, I think it was Flaxwood)

Just about all the "not wood" guitars and basses are hollowed out to some degree.

Basslab goes the furthest and makes nearly completely hollow instruments.

 

[A-Branger]

and it's supposed to have enhanced sonic properties

marketing translation: It has the same density as wood X which is normaly used in guitar bodies