It should have come with sunglasses. But I was prepared.
Tl'dr; it's an Aristides, it's quite different from their other models, it's cool in its own right, and the pickup + guitar's natural loudness mean it a LOUD mother with a huge sound. New patches required on all my amps.
This is Aristides 'other' model; their 020. It's a double-cut, and in typical Aristides fashion, it's its own thing.
It's not comparable to their other models, other than the brand. Thankfully, the brand in this case is the main talking point, but at this stage most folks will know what Aristides are about:
* They offer three models; superstrat (6, 7, 8, straight or fanned-frets), that double-cut (020, straight-scale only) and a 5-string bass)
* These guitars don't use wood AT ALL. The body is molded with their proprietary Arium material, with other various layers, and their fingerboard is Richlite
* The options you have are mostly around the hardware, electronics, fret-size etc... but, as the guitars molded into existence, there is no option available around fingerboard radius, neck joint (which, by the way, doesn't exist), general shape, output jack position etc...
The 020 has fewer options since no tremolo is available.
However, I want to say Aristides were EVEN MORE ACCOMMODATING than usual to me for this build.
* They did the custom inlay (I'm French, Paris born-and-bred; so the Aristides symbol, naturally, made this guitar's nickname... PARISTIDES
)
* The guitar sports so damn fetching aluminium pickup rings... Oh my...
* They did my very specific electronics; it involves a blower switch (Bridge pickup straight to the output), but switched in position vs. the standard 3-way toggle. Hence the most close-by toggle is a 2-way which gives me choice between full power and a preset tone of my choice. There's also a coil split on the volume pickup
* The bridge is in the black nickel finish
For pickups I went with the Lundgrens Black Heavens. I've never had Lundgrens so it was a great opportunity to try. And the Black Heavens because I wasn't quite feeling going full-blast with M6s on this. I feel these could be a good compromise.
They sound very, very big. I'm going to have to re-do all my patches for sure.
Otherwise... what else.
Well the guitar feels quite different from their other models, as expected. Notably, it has more of a 'hollow' vibe in the tone. Acoustically, it's quite louder than my fanned-fret 060 but there's also other differences, so it may not hold in all situations.
The Richlite fingerboard here is more marbled than previously. I love it. I prefer streaky ebony over the jetblack stuff, so this has me very happy indeed.
The nice pictures were taken by the fine folks of Aristides. The terrible ones are mine.
Tl'dr; it's an Aristides, it's quite different from their other models, it's cool in its own right, and the pickup + guitar's natural loudness mean it a LOUD mother with a huge sound. New patches required on all my amps.
This is Aristides 'other' model; their 020. It's a double-cut, and in typical Aristides fashion, it's its own thing.
It's not comparable to their other models, other than the brand. Thankfully, the brand in this case is the main talking point, but at this stage most folks will know what Aristides are about:
* They offer three models; superstrat (6, 7, 8, straight or fanned-frets), that double-cut (020, straight-scale only) and a 5-string bass)
* These guitars don't use wood AT ALL. The body is molded with their proprietary Arium material, with other various layers, and their fingerboard is Richlite
* The options you have are mostly around the hardware, electronics, fret-size etc... but, as the guitars molded into existence, there is no option available around fingerboard radius, neck joint (which, by the way, doesn't exist), general shape, output jack position etc...
The 020 has fewer options since no tremolo is available.
However, I want to say Aristides were EVEN MORE ACCOMMODATING than usual to me for this build.
* They did the custom inlay (I'm French, Paris born-and-bred; so the Aristides symbol, naturally, made this guitar's nickname... PARISTIDES
)* The guitar sports so damn fetching aluminium pickup rings... Oh my...
* They did my very specific electronics; it involves a blower switch (Bridge pickup straight to the output), but switched in position vs. the standard 3-way toggle. Hence the most close-by toggle is a 2-way which gives me choice between full power and a preset tone of my choice. There's also a coil split on the volume pickup
* The bridge is in the black nickel finish
For pickups I went with the Lundgrens Black Heavens. I've never had Lundgrens so it was a great opportunity to try. And the Black Heavens because I wasn't quite feeling going full-blast with M6s on this. I feel these could be a good compromise.
They sound very, very big. I'm going to have to re-do all my patches for sure.
Otherwise... what else.
Well the guitar feels quite different from their other models, as expected. Notably, it has more of a 'hollow' vibe in the tone. Acoustically, it's quite louder than my fanned-fret 060 but there's also other differences, so it may not hold in all situations.
The Richlite fingerboard here is more marbled than previously. I love it. I prefer streaky ebony over the jetblack stuff, so this has me very happy indeed.
The nice pictures were taken by the fine folks of Aristides. The terrible ones are mine.
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