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Aluminum Neck Club
- Thread starter oZZma
- Start date
Hey, it was just a play on Aluminium being a much lighter metal...sorry, I'll take my meds right now lol
Definitely more “familiar” probably due to the Aluminati having a fretboard radius.. the Obstructures is flat and takes a minute to hop back on if I’ve been playing “normal” basses more often. Which I do, haha.. the Obstructures is like strapping on a rocket ship— nothing quite like it! I’m going to restring it with some Hi-Beams this week!
Careful leaving Hi-Beams on for a long time. I used to use them exclusively on my kramers, but they eventually ate through the zero fret. I noticed a slight bit of damage to the nut on my EGC neck from using them for a while too
That’s the nature of stainless steel though lol, it’s much harder than everything else. I’m looking around for the brightest nickel strings now
My b! Hard to detect tone of voice over text and all
Hey, all good! I'm an engineer, and couldn't resist the temptation lol. FWIW, I think aluminium necks would be pretty cool.
There’s a company right now that’s trying to offer competitively priced aluminum necks, and they’re working on bass necks soon. They’re called Hoxey Guitars, I constantly get ads for them.
(Aluminati is a pretty killer builder though)
Noted! The Aluminati & Obstructures both have brass nuts but the Obstructures has nickel steel frets, unlike the ‘nati, which has stainless.. might pick up a pack of Rotosound Nickels for the Obstructures. Or some Sunbeams! Why not. Lol it’s so zingy I don’t think it would matter. Might try some GHS Boomers.
Not tryna start nothing but even outside all the political stuff those Hoxey necks looks like straight trash IMO. Fit & finish looks embarassingly bad.. I’d pinch my pennies & save up for something better.
I agree they don't look very great, but they're out there and they're undercutting everybody else by a large amount so I'm dying to hear opinions from owners instead of speculating
Not saying that you can't try them out on your bass! I just wouldn't leave them on there for months if that's your normal shtick. I tend to leave a set of strings on for 4-6 months, but I'm also a penny pincher. It's painful that bass strings are so much more expensive than the average guitar string
Yeah in my early playing days I used Ernie Ball strings almost exclusively due to their price point.. then picked up some Bass Boomers one day on a whim & realized they sounded better longer.. pretty wild nostalgia trip lol.
These days I’m with you— being a hardcore DR strings lover it’s hard to wanna try new stuff that’s less expensive but sometimes I’ll snag a pack or two of something I see on special. The Guitar Center up the street had a $12 per pack Ernie Ball sale going on so I picked up a set of their newest type of Slinky. And the GZR set I purchased new on Reverb for $90 came with a free set of Dunlop Nickels. Feeling very string rich at the moment lol. The thing is, I don’t know when I’ll even use these.. just put Sunbeams on my Classic Vibe the other day. Life is hard
Really? The only pictures I've seen are up on their website and the polished ones don't seem to bely any issues... I also don't know if I'd say they are cheap either. A guitar neck with polished SS frets and polished neck comes out to $684 on their builder site. That seems to be at least close to what others are charging.
I’ve been using DR Pure Blues lately. They’re not the longest lasting string but they sound great fresh out the pack.
I’m looking at trying GHS nickels and SIT strings, also interested in balanced tension right now
Hoxey’s lowest common denominator business model gets a big no thank you from me. YMMV. There are too many other AL builders out there putting out some painstakingly good work— Alex from RGI, for instance. A used RGI neck just popped up in the classifieds & I’m bummed I can’t snag it, lol. There’s also a great looking Baguley neck floating around in there a few pages back.
I saw both of them. The RGI listing is basically, here, you don't have to wait for one. It's never been used and the new price. I work in NH so my preference would be a RGI neck anyway. I do like the way the Aluminati necks look but I don't think that anodizing a neck is a good idea at all on a bass neck.
But I probably like a lot of other people are hoping that the pricing on necks come down a bit.
With the price of aluminum as a material steadily climbing, I doubt necks’ll get any less expensive!
Still holding out that one of these brands will make a short scale 30" aluminum bass neck. While I'm sure there really isn't a market for it and the R&D into the specs doesn't seem worth it, I would kill for one for my Mustang.
