NBD - Aria fretless acoustic

ICBM

Well, on Friday actually, but I needed to do a bit of work to it first.



Aria FEB-F2/FL - full-scale fretless. It's an interesting combination of cheap and surprisingly good - it's quite crudely-finished on the outside, just a simple matt stain/single-coat varnish (not particularly well-applied in places!) but well-made inside. Absolutely astonishing that they could build something even this well for a retail price of just over £300, really - even the electrics aren't bad.

It did come with a particularly nasty set of bronze roundwound strings - *why* do all manufacturers think that because acoustic guitars use them, basses should? Especially inappropriate on a fretless - which I replaced with flatwounds, cut the nut properly and removed the badly-fitted strap button from the back of the heel (wrong place, it makes the whole thing neck heavy - it needs an old-fashioned headstock tie-on), but other than that it was more or less OK.

It's pretty big, particularly for someone as small as me, but with the strap at the headstock it doesn't hang too far out to the left and it's very playable. Sadly, it's still not all that loud - I had hoped to use it unamplified for an acoustic jam session I've been taking my little Tanglewood rubber-band bass to with a Roland Micro Cube, but in fact it's still going to need the amp even to compete with an acoustic guitar and a singer. It also overloads the little amp badly at even very low volume, so I think it's going to be better kept for proper band stuff with a bigger amp.

It also came with the world's shittest gig bag, basically a thin nylon cover with no padding whatever, and a decent one is likely to be fairly expensive if I decide I do need to carry it around. But given that I got it second hand and it cost even less than the Tanglewood, I can't really complain at all...

ElectricXII

HNBD. From the photo it looks pretty classy. I don't like overly glossy finishes and yours is the opposite.

Funkfingers

Electro-acoustic bass guitars never seem to be loud enough in either mode.

Bass ukuleles and Ashbory thingies would be my choice.

Winny_Pooh

Fun looking thing, enjoy

Tannin

New toy day. Yay! Nice one.

dazzajl

Very elegant looking indeed and it seems to be getting quite hard to find unlined boards, so extra loveliness there. 

roberty

A friend of mine has something similar, it's great fun. Enjoy 

GoFish

Nice one - the F holes are a good touch and complement the cutaway imo. HNBD!

ICBM

Funkfingers said:

Electro-acoustic bass guitars never seem to be loud enough in either mode.

Bass ukuleles and Ashbory thingies would be my choice.

Yes, I’m going to keep the Tanglewood uke-bass - I wasn’t sure, in a way I bought this as a ‘serious bass’ whereas the Tanglewood is a ‘practical toy’ - but they’re really very different, despite both being fretless acoustic ‘bass things’, and I can probably justify having two… especially as portability on public transport is a factor!

The Aria is massively loud and with a huge bass response through a big amp though - feedback may be an issue, but the notch control on the preamp seems quite effective.

dazzajl said:

Very elegant looking indeed and it seems to be getting quite hard to find unlined boards, so extra loveliness there. 

Unlined just looks far better. I don’t see the point of lines at all - they’re on the front where you can’t really see them when you’re playing, and anyway, you still have to play by muscle memory and ear. This one has side dots at the 3/5/7/9/12 positions, which is all you really need to get you into the right ballpark.

proggy

That looks really cool, I'm thinking of getting one.
Are you in a rockabilly band?

ICBM

proggy said:

Are you in a rockabilly band?

No, but I get what you mean .

Funkfingers

Vertically-challenged man, dwarfed by acoustic bass register instrument? Mariachi.  

p90fool

I borrowed one of those a couple of years ago and when close miced combined with the pickup for low end I got some quite convincing double bass type recordings from it.
They're great fun. 

Tannin

ICBM said:

Unlined just looks far better. I don’t see the point of lines at all - they’re on the front where you can’t really see them when you’re playing, and anyway, you still have to play by muscle memory and ear. This one has side dots at the 3/5/7/9/12 positions, which is all you really need to get you into the right ballpark.

Just so. I have never seen the point of putting markers on the fretboard with any instrument (fretless or fretted). If you can see them, you aren't holding it right. 

Side dots, of course, are a different matter. (In fact on my current new build, I have specified no fretboard face markers and oversize side dots so that I can play it in dim light without my reading glasses.)

One exception to my  no-marker rule. There is a chap who teaches stuff in the Internet who often uses a guitar with no markers. It can be quite hard to work out whether he is fretting the 8th fret or the 9th fret sometimes. You have to figure it out by ear.