Less material? Hard aluminum alloys are pretty expensive...



Cheers, Daniel.

I would think you need less material so the truss rod can move it. But, that's just armchair engineering talking. I'm skeptical that it would end up being less expensive. CNC time is expensive and it looks like there would be a lot of time on the machine. Especially on an alloy that you would want to be strong enough to not have the frets wearing down quickly. Not like you can refret it. I'm sure Emmett has thought through this, just kicking out the questions that come to mind.

One thing for sure - just like the Apple MacBooks, when you put it on your legs while wearing shorts it will be COLD!!! Heh.

Definitely want to see more pics. Huge potential to build out a retro steampunk looking Stick.

My main curiousity is they're going to go back to having the first inlay be on the second or third fret (Like, the difference between the 34" or 36" scale). How are the inlays laid out anyway? dots? linear?

With my aluminum-bodied basses I have had some experience with that, especially after being outside at -20 Celsius.... but it does warm up quickly, just keep your shirt on
That would seem to be the most logical solution, so I'm sure that's what Emmett went for. Dying to see more pictures!

Here is another image from the lecture that Emmett gave on Saturday afternoon at the Southern California Stick Seminar. It contrasts the bolt on wood headstock with the midnight blue aluminum touchboard.

As I recall, the instrument weighs in at about 8.2 pounds. In this image, you can see the fret rails and the touchboard are all cut from the same piece of aluminum - this was perhaps the most amazing upgrade to witness. The metal on metal ringing sustain produced by this instrument (especially in the melody side) was audible even when played without an amp.

Note on the pick up that it is upside down in it's configuration. Emmett was experimenting with placing the pickups closer to the bridge but found the tone to be too thin. This explains why the input jack is exactly opposite to where it is normally plugs in.

According to Emmett, this medium allows the instrument to get to market faster in that many of the manual processes that were required with setting the frets into a wooden instrument, configuring and doing a final set up on were more labor intensive.

While I could be off base, I feel that the collective take away on the new design was expansion. Expansion and a more streamlined manufacturing process. SE continues to innovate and lead the Free Hands revolution and the many new mods to this instrument in particular will mean they are more available and it will enable more players to get Sticks at a lower cost.

Apparentely I was wrong: the dot on the third fret suggests the same tuning as the 36" models.
Anyway, really, really cool! Thank you or the picture

Earthgene - thanks for the pics and info!

As always, this Stick design is fascinating!
My guess about the neck profile is that it would have approximately the same amount of flexibility as a wooden neck, so that the truss rod can do it's work. CNC time can be expensive, but on a good machine a large tool can do the fast, rough milling and another tool the finishing. I'm wondering, too, what kind of alloy it must be, regarding the fact that the frets are part of the neck... maybe a thick coating?? You can not only anodize aluminium the normal way, but also do things like hard anodizing, chromating etc. for a VERY hard upper layer. I'm not an expert on these matters, but I have seen some remarkable results with chromating on an aluminium part of a mailing machine that I helped develop.
Very cool design, indeed!
Jaap

I just got in trouble on another forum - maybe my text comes across without the intended inflection, so just to be clear... Any questions I have are just me wondering out loud rather than questioning the design.

my guess would be to reduce weight