“Only they who believeth in their guitar quest shall be granted passage”

Category: news

Pocket Guitar Aeroband, A New Way To Be A Musician
I have something interesting to show to everyone. Usually I talk about tone woods or guitar wiring schematics, but this time is special. It’s a musical gadget integrated to our cellphones through apps. yes, it’s pretty much involving nowadays technology and it’s fun. it’s Pocket Guitar Aeroband.

Pocket Guitar Aeroband

Pocket guitar aeroband shape is similar to Guitar plectrum / guitar picks and that’s exactly how to use it. we will be doing air guitar show! just strum it after connect it to phone and the sound of clear and nice folk acoustic guitar will come out throughout the phone speakers.

Aeroband Pocket guitar

well, okay i’m just too rushing it because I’m so excited. First download the Aeroband app on phone Apps store, install and open it.

Aeroband App

Pocket Guitar uses bluetooth as the way it connects to phone, so make sure the bluetooth devices is turned on

make sure to activate GPS on the phone too. This gadget seems like use Accelerometer and gryroscope system to detect the hand strumming, so let’s do that.

i made lots of pic to help my explanation so here they are:

connect Pocketguitar Aeroband

click go and we have this on the screen:

aeroband pocket guitar

choose pocket guitar and we’re good to go

playing Aeroband pocket guitar

so far so good, I did the unboxing video of this gadget and it was fun.

and the check sound video. I was really excited by this.. tried on my cellphone and played it through the amp. it sounds just like good guitar with good wood body:

so far i like this product. it sounds good and it came in great and secured package so I didn’t worry about any damages by delivery. DHL delivered right to my front door and i have no worries at all about DHL services, they are good.

Few things about this gadget before i click publish, is somehow this pioneer product is developing and evolving. I might had few small difficulties in connecting it to phone, like :
i need an hour to understand that this thing needs the GPS to be ON

the gravity affects the gyroscope-things so i had to adjust my strumming faced toward earth so i can get equal power of strumming movements between upstroke and downstrokes

the firmware upgrade made it more sensitive to strumming, i like it before the firmware upgrade and i don’t know how to revert it
BUT i have faith this will get better because one thing. NOthing beats the excitement of doing Air Guitar ! and this Aeroband pocket guitar, it just has that fun. so, i think this stuff worth to get our attentions. So please check https://aeroband.net/ to get more information and you may make an order,FYI: there’s pocket drums too.

see ya guys!
August 26, 2020
Ibanez JS1600 PSV Premium silver, for us or for Joe?

hello everyone and I’m sorry. I’ve been fooling around for last 3 years and this year, i am making my comeback to this blog. I hope this time topic will bring back the writing fun in me. haha

lately I made a small business by trading my stuff, to get new gears and new stuff for my videos on my youtube channel, and that activity brought me to meet the Ibanez JS1600 PSV Premium silver guitar. a made in japan guitar by Team J. Craft, surely it’s not a joke. check this crazy specs:

Ibanez JS1600
Made in: Japan by Team J. Craft
Finishes: PSV (Premium Silver)

Ibanez JS1600 PSV Premium silver guitar

Ibanez JS1600 PSV Premium silver guitar back side

Body
Body material : Mahogany
Neck joint : Tilt Joint
Bridge : Gotoh GTC101 bridge
Hardware color : Chrome

Ibanez JS1600 PSV body guitar

Ibanez JS1600 PSV body guitar back

Neck
Neck type : JS Prestige
Material : 1-Piece Maple
Fingerboard : Rosewood
Inlays : Abalone Dots
Frets : 22 /6105

Ibanez JS1600 PSV headstock guitar

Ibanez JS1600 PSV tuning machine guitar

Electronics
PU Config : HH
Neck PU : DiMarzio PAF Pro
Bridge PU : DiMarzio FRED
Controls : 1 Volume (with High-Pass filter)
1 Tone (with coil tap) / 3-Way Toggle

Ibanez JS1600 PSV Premium silver guitar complete pack

Neck dimensions
Scale length : 648mm/25.5″
Radius : 250mm

and it came with great hardcase, beautiful neck plate and joe satriani and steve vai signature. FYI it was preloved guitar. the previous owner had a chance to bring it with him and got it signatured by joe satriani and steve vai.. what a lucky man

Ibanez JS1600 hardcase guitar

Ibanez JS1600 neckplate guitar

Ibanez JS1600 joe satriani signature

that’s almost all about the guitar details.. wonderful isn’t it?

now, for my real topic here. Ibanez JS1600 guitar has fixed bridge! for a two thousands five hundreds dollars guitar which is a Joe Satriani signature, don’t we think it is overpriced? no whammy bar? come on, besides this is professor satchafunkilus we’re talking about. even mr. Satch himself using whammy bar mostly on his performances.

that’s what i thought first when i saw the ads of this Ibanez JS1600 PSV Premium silver guitar . but when i plug it on my small amp, i know this one is no joke. As a result, it’s a beast machine waiting to be unleashed on big stages. the neck feels great and the strings are stay in tunes forever. furthermore, what make it best is the volume pot knob! it responses like any other guitar I’ve tried so far.. it’s so easy to dial to get exact amount of volume and gain we want to, even the tone knob does great job, too. certainly i made a sample sound on my youtube channel:

after checking the video i hope you understand what i’m talking about, most importantly, this guitar feels like a kind of joe satriani’s understanding point of view as non whammy bar user guitarists. so it is like more for us, or for satriani’s fans who love his playing and wants to discover their own playing styles such as a non whammy bar guitarists (like me 😀 i’d love to learn though).

so, the conclusion is, this guitar is worth to be collected whether as our private collection or as our main axe on our gigs. i hope you like my review. i know this kind of writing is old ones, you know, nowadays people goes to Instagram and making judgement by one picture or one minute videos and short captions, but i stick on this. having my own site and writing honest reviews. therefore it’s more me.

one thing i feel need to say is, please subscribe to my youtube channel guitar learner. it is synchronized with the stuff i write here so i guess it is still correlated as “old but gold” way of learning. I’d really appreciate that if you do. thanks, see you next posts

February 13, 2019
Guitar Authenticity Check
Guitar Authenticity Check is a must-to-do thing when we buy a guitar, whether it’s new or pre-owned one. Why? because counterfeit is one thing nobody likes it, include us, guitarists. Unfortunately, this issue has been among us in decades, and it’s really important for us to take serious measurements about this.

personally, and professionally(!), I don’t hate customized guitar by luthiers, I kinda like the way they set their own standards on how a guitar is supposed to be. But I really hate if my friends (or even myself) found out that they paid TOO MUCH for fake guitar.. and one more thing, there’s almost nothing i can do about this counterfeit issue.

BUT, i think i can help a little by sharing my notes about Guitar Authenticity Check. Recently I helped my friend buying a guitar and the result was quite great. It’s Epiphone Les Paul 100 guitar, cherry sunburst with pickguard, very lovely.

I knew (as everyone else does) that Epiphone is one of leading brand in guitars, and for couple times i found epiphone parts such like backplates were sold separately, yes, it has counterfeit-risks.

so I’ve checked all detailed parts and found out few details which might very useful for us. Here’s the pic:

although there’s no serial numbers carved or printed on headstocks and neck, I found it labeled under the bridge pickups, yup, there you have it. I’ve checked the serial number on epiphone serial number decoder at guitardaterproject.org and this guitar is made in Indonesia on november 2010 by Samick Factory. quite nice info right? also i found out “Epiphone” brand carved/molded on stop bridge, tune-o-matic bridge, below pickups, even on mono jack socket. well done, Epiphone.

based on those, I made some notes, at least for my own standards, when i want to buy a guitar

Guitar Authenticity Check points
- Get the guitar images and other info from its official website. there we will get its specs, and the closest guitar model looks
- Get the sound samples from videos/youtube reviews. we can also get the guitar physical appearances there
- compare it directly by try the guitar first before we decide ANYTHING. nothing beats the real sound and the playability/actions when you need to decide whether buying it or not
- bring your friend who is also a guitarist to get more proper considerations
- always choose trusted seller, if it’s not possible, ask the seller to provide the guitar authenticity info and proof. remember, it is you who hold the money, keep that in mind always
those words above just might be not enough, but i think those could be useful as basic considerations. good luck and have fun playing guitar! 🙂
March 7, 2016
Guitar Riffs Intro to Boost Your Self-Esteem

sometimes it’s hard to get some confidence in our playing. there are others with better licks, arpeggios, or even their own awesome songs those make us feel “not that good”. When you pick a guitar on your friend’s house or stages then begin playing it, you feel nervous. yes, it happens to me too many times. We all need some sparks to get the heat started. One way I do for most of the time is, doing some cool guitar riffs i like to get a grip into the situation (we could say it when we do check-sounds). Surely with early preparation. So i made a list, short one, of five guitar riffs to bring myself into confidence.

first on my list, well of course, the intro of “enter sandman” metallica. It’s very popular intro, even some people would say it’s a cliche, i wouldn’t say that. The first clean riff section will make sure your clean tone is set. the next section presents our overdrive and distortion sounds whether it’s ready or not, so you can do some adjustments onstage. the important thing is, this guitar riffs is so hot so by doing it you can feel the hype and forget your nervous.

the second, “can’t stop” – RHCP‘s intro. hot sweet punches to the strings with funky rhythm tempo wake your both right and left hands instantly without making them shaky. a slight overdrive and bright light bridge pickups’ sound will drive you fast into the confidence. Red Hot Chili Peppers makes everyone hopping their hips better than any hip-hop.

third intro is “Humans Being” – Van Halen. I like this because it’s van halen and it’s the easy one. I’m not doing “eruption” to impress anyone, i know that doesn’t work for boosting self-esteem. actually i chose this intro because i like the reverb and modulation effects created by van halen in this intro. Somehow by doing this on checksound, i will know how my modulation effects setup works on different stages. the point is, if our preparation is set and the output sounds just like we want to, there will be no more reason of getting lack of confidence.

the fourth is “this ain’t a love song” intro by bon jovi. a fine touch by richie sambora’s taste. Sometimes all i need is one clean tone sound and all will be set and ready. i use this many times, especially when i get my analog pedals on stage. a rich clean tone will be overdriven nicely and stay clear in distortion. at least that’s what i think and it goes smoothly in most of my performances.

the last Guitar Riffs is important

the last one, our own songs’ intro! surely as guitarist we have our own riffs or licks and i like to play my own riffs on stage, just to get myself comfortable while I’m checking my own sound style exactly. this one is the most important. making our own licks and riffs is the great and fun part of guitar learning. because, YOU WILL NEVER GO WRONG about it. It’s the reflection of our hard works. so be proud and get more confident about our own playing.

surely we can do some riffs created by famous instrumental guitarists, or some hyper crazy licks exercises. it’s all up to you. now I’ve shared my list. Where’s yours?

actually we can exchange our guitar riffs list and get better in our guitar playing, right?

two men exchanging 1 coin, both of them get 1 coin
two men exchanging 1 list of 5 guitar riffs intro, both of them have 10 guitar riffs intro
The Guitar Learner
September 25, 2015