four_oclocker_2.2 wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 11:46 am

eliya wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 12:31 am Travis Beans also look cool, however (hot take), aluminum neck guitars are so overrated. FM steve (RIP I miss him) made his sound crazy good. Duane Denison also. Uhh... who else??? In most people's hands they just sound like guitars.

Yeah, Eliya's not wrong. In my hands, my TBD sounds not super dissimilar to me playing my MIM Tele Custom. What I do love about the TBD is the feel of the neck and body - the 500 has always felt like the optimal body/neck shape for me.

Aluminum makes a bigger difference with basses for me.
It's just a special sound, and you can't really get it out of anything else.
I think a good Bean/EGC bass can do almost everything well, except for super deep, dead thump-thump heartbeat stuff.
They're too much for some bands, and they're not very forgiving if the notes aren't weighted accurately going into the instrument.
But when they're right, they're perfect.

I sorta agree on guitar, in that i'm not very interested, for myself, in a straight-up tuned-to-E aluminum neck guitar. Baritone, yes. But not a normal one tuned normally.

Nate Dort wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 7:37 pm Still kinda want to get one of these kits and assemble and play it as-is without doing any routing.

For Your Consideration

I like aluminum guitars because they are extra.

Treble a step up from new strings
Sustain w/o effects, maybe another step up from playing an amp on the sweet spot on the verge of feedback
Twang a step up from a Telecaster - the lower end is also an important part of this.

I think they’re especially great through good amps set carefully to narrow the frequencies a little bit, like an AC30 w/ Blues or any other decent amp that now costs $6k because of blues boomers. I guess Hiwatts through Fanes is a more famous example, but I would get another sound with an Ampeg V2 through Celestions that was like an overtone spray, kind of Wipers-ish but a sound you could really base a whole band around.

Caveats:

Slathering them in effects kind of takes away what makes it special or something else entirely. Even pedal steel through certain effects can make it sound like a regular guitar.

All guitars sound differently through a fuzz, but there isn’t much in between a plinky guitar played through a fuzz like MBV/Dinsoaur/Hendrix vs a Les Paul played through a fuzz until its collapsed into an American Woman thing.

Of course there are a million other variables, and gain structure is a big part of it, but while aluminum through a fuzz is cool so is every other guitar. So I get it not making a difference in some situations.

matttkkkk wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 6:50 pm

Nate Dort wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 7:37 pm Still kinda want to get one of these kits and assemble and play it as-is without doing any routing.

For Your Consideration

Perfectly hideous!

eephus wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 5:53 pm I think a good Bean/EGC bass can do almost everything well, except for super deep, dead thump-thump heartbeat stuff.

I realize that's not what people buy them for, but is there a reason they can't do that sound? Just roll off the tone and put some flats or a mute on it, no?

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 7:05 pm I like aluminum guitars because they are extra.

Yeah. Aluminum guitars can be full dynamic range, full frequency range in a way that wood guitars are not.

That's not necessarily a good thing, and honestly they probably don't work for me in regular tuning because I'm sort of a caveman on the top half of a guitar tuned up past D.

Baritone, I can play, and bass I'm actually good at, so the sensitivity and frequency response is a plus instead of magnifying my hackiness.

penningtron wrote:

eephus wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 5:53 pm I think a good Bean/EGC bass can do almost everything well, except for super deep, dead thump-thump heartbeat stuff.

I realize that's not what people buy them for, but is there a reason they can't do that sound? Just roll off the tone and put some flats or a mute on it, no?

You would have to treat it or use your fingers/palm to mute it pretty aggressively. Too much sustain, even with the tone rolled down, in my experience.

eephus wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 5:53 pm

four_oclocker_2.2 wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 11:46 am

eliya wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 12:31 am Travis Beans also look cool, however (hot take), aluminum neck guitars are so overrated. FM steve (RIP I miss him) made his sound crazy good. Duane Denison also. Uhh... who else??? In most people's hands they just sound like guitars.

Yeah, Eliya's not wrong. In my hands, my TBD sounds not super dissimilar to me playing my MIM Tele Custom. What I do love about the TBD is the feel of the neck and body - the 500 has always felt like the optimal body/neck shape for me.

Aluminum makes a bigger difference with basses for me.
It's just a special sound, and you can't really get it out of anything else.

I sorta agree on guitar, in that i'm not very interested, for myself, in a straight-up tuned-to-E aluminum neck guitar. Baritone, yes. But not a normal one tuned normally.

The thing that most people tend to miss about the FM steve guitar tone is the full-range/DI component of the sound. Many guitarist who also do the full-range thing (Arab on Radar is the only one coming to mind right now) are also aluminum guitar bands. However, a non-AL guitar that's distorting and plugged into a full-range system will also get that high frequency extension.

I think the full-range thing is the most important element in the FM steve guitar tone. The notched metal pick it probably second. AL guitar is third.

And yeah, I agree with the assessment that an AL guitar doesn't sound wildly different than a wood guitar when plugged into a traditional rock guitar amp and sitting in a full-band mix.

From my limited experience it seems like aluminum basses sound more noticeably different than aluminum guitars.

Gear confession of the day: I think I have a cable fetish. They don't have to be expensive but I derive pleasure from well-appointed patch cables of appropriate length, flexibility, durability, and organization. I have upgraded the patches on my guitar board several times, and I get a special sort of jollies from replacing the dodgy patches on my Escape Rope bandmate's pedalboard with my hand-me-downs. I also enjoy rolling up mic cables, and the feeling of plugging in an XLR that has a well-made connector with a satisfying *click* gives me joy. I've never achieved penile arousal or ejaculation from this, but there is a little dick in my brain that gets off.

eephus wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 5:53 pm
Aluminum makes a bigger difference with basses for me.

I can agree with that, but at the same time every aluminum bass player sounds like David Sims, who famously used a wood bass. I think it's just easier to get that sound out of an aluminum bass as opposed to, say, a p-bass, but both are capable of that. If someone is making their bass sound like something else that is entirely unattainable from a wood bass, I just haven't heard it. I literally mean that - I just not have heard it, but yeah maybe that exists.

benadrian wrote: The thing that most people tend to miss about the FM steve guitar tone is the full-range/DI component of the sound.

I think the full-range thing is the most important element in the FM steve guitar tone. The notched metal pick it probably second. AL guitar is third.

I think Ben hits the nail on the head perfectly. All those components and Steve went into PA speakers, which are full range. It's not like he had a mellow sound in Big Black, and that was all wood guitars.

And yes I forgot about Keith Levene making his TB sound awesome.

I was at a pedal swap the other day put on by a buddy of mine, and one of the guys who came dropped off a 5 watt Bugera lunchbox head in exchange for some stuff. My bud wanted to test it out but didn’t have a proper cab in stock to do so—all he had was a personal vocal monitor cab with 2 5” PA speakers. Well, we plugged it in, using my bud’s Peavey Patriot… and the resulting sound was clang-o-rama. I immediately started playing half-remembered Shellac riffs.

I don’t know if it’d be the right sound for my band, or if it’s a sound anyone with conventional tastes would like. What it was was fucking awesome.