AIM's 2021 musical gear upgrades

[AestheticsInMotion]

Due to some good fortune at work, I've taken a short sabbatical from my normal penny-pinching invest-everything ways and gone all in on some dream gear I've been eying since... Well. Since I was but a wee lad in elementary school reading though my brother's stash of guitar player and guitar world magazines from the mid nineties and early aughts.

I'm only now getting all this stuff set up and starting to fiddle with it, but so far... No regrats.

First and foremost, a handpan! Well, a Russian version called a Ravvast. I was turned on to these by a gymnast nearly a decade ago, and have been waiting to grab one ever since. Ravvast.com has an amazing online player where you can sample all the different drums, and choose what scale you would like to order. I went with B Celtic, as it's quite a bit different than what one normally hears in western music, yet still very musical. This is an instrument that anyone can pick up and within 5 minutes sound incredible on.

Next up is the ax. An Australian-made weapon of devestation made by none other than Ormsby, fast becoming one of the hottest small builders in the world.

My first seven string.

My first extended scale (27 frets!)

My first multiscale neck (each string has a different scale length, resulting in a "fanned fret" design)

My first kill-switch (time to master Buckethead's "Jordan")

My first Yngwie-esque scalloped frets.

First Floyd rose.

What a guitar. As crazy as it sounds, what I'm most impressed by so far is the frets! I've never played a guitar with frets that offered so little resistance—these feel even better than my Mockingbird after it was plek'd by Mike Lull in Bellevue. (Speaking of which, the Mockingbird desperately needs some fret work again....)

The neck is also phenomenal, a bit between old-school ibanez's speedy RG profile, and Jackson's super wide and flat shape. It comes together to make the 7 string much more approachable than the last one I tried—a cheap Dean—that felt like gripping the wrong end of a baseball bat. It's going to definitely take some time to get used to quick and complex chord changes with the extra string throwing me off, but I'm already loving the ability to extend arpeggios with ease.

The pedalboard got a makeover as well. A Whammy Dt replaced three cheap Amazon specials and a boutique distortion pedal replaced a Metal Zone. One-spot power box provides all the juice in a safe and organized manor.

As far as future changes, I absolutely adore the simple ditto looper, and have nothing but good things to say about Boss's venurable DD-7 delay pedal. Those aren't going anywhere. The delay and looper are run through the effects loop, while the rest is going through the front. I'll be picking up a tuner tonight so I don't have to keep jacking into the roommates pedal board for tuning duties lol. A chorus pedal is the only other thing on the radar. I'm a huge fan of visual sound's H20 chorus and might just go that route as it's something I'm intimately familiar with. If it just had a damn effects level knob it would be a no-brainer...

There's one more gear upgrade that deserves it's own post once I find the time to really dive deep. For now I'll leave you with the roommates pedalboard (literally just remembered that he has my wah on his board. I don't want to redo my board so the wah will likely stay there).

He's got the bigger brother to my ditto looper, a fantastic reverb pedal, a Line 6 DL4 delay pedal that sounds wonderful when it's not broken, which is 90% of the time (probably the most notoriously unreliable pedal made in the last twenty years), the aforementioned H20 chorus pedal, some boring distortions (sorry DS-1 fans), a CS-3 compression pedal (the true workhorse. If I could only have a single pedal it would be the CS-3, and it would be turned on 99% of the time for every genre), and a tuner.

[beefchips]

@aestheticsinmotion curious, Ive never seena guitar wiht scooped-out fretboard way up on the neck, is that to make it easier to bend?

[AestheticsInMotion]

@beefchips that's the main selling point. Better control with vibrato and bends. The tradeoff is you have to play with the a lighter touch, as if you press too hard the notes will go sharp. I guess that's the a problem with or without fret scallops, but it's much more pronounced with them

[jminer]

@aestheticsinmotion Wow that looks cool!

I've recently started leaning to play bass and am loving it, nearly everything in this post went way over my head though!

[ClassicDatsunDebate]

@aestheticsinmotion
There’s….too…much…I dunno …where to….start.
This is all soooo awesome! Too late to reply coherently . I’ll just say, sup Whammy DT buddy.

[AestheticsInMotion]

@classicdatsundebate that is exactly how I feel. I need a week off from work so I can really dig into all of this. The handpan has been explored the most because of how easy it is to just start playing

[ttyymmnn]

@aestheticsinmotion said in AIM's 2021 musical gear upgrades:

B Celtic

Can you provide more info on this? As a music major, I learned (and have mostly forgotten) all those scales like dorian, lydian, mixolydian, etc. How is the Celtic scale assembled?

[Snakesm13]

@aestheticsinmotion said in AIM's 2021 musical gear upgrades:

boutique distortion pedal replaced a Metal Zone

I fell in love with this pedal in Jr. High... Are you looking to keep it or get rid of it? I might be interested.

Also drum is cool but that guitar, Man that guitar, speechless.

[Jarrett]

@aestheticsinmotion Still lovin' that colour you picked.

When I clicked this post this is the first thing that came to mind:

"Me with my Squier Affinity"

[ClassicDatsunDebate]

@aestheticsinmotion said in AIM's 2021 musical gear upgrades:

@classicdatsundebate that is exactly how I feel. I need a week off from work so I can really dig into all of this. The handpan has been explored the most because of how easy it is to just start playing

That’s how I felt when I got my H9. I’ll play with my new wah instead

[ClassicDatsunDebate]

@aestheticsinmotion
Here's my latest setup:

The whammy DT is a CHONK. I've been really appreciating the Klon Klone boost thing. I may need to invest in a JHS Doublebarrell if this keeps up.

Empress makes some sweet pedals...that thing will chug.