NAAB Studios

So I got this guitar the other day. And before I got it I had trouble finding very much information on it. So I kind of made a promise to myself that once I had it I would do my best to write an in depth review of this instrument and it’s features. So here goes…

First off let me say that this is the only Iceman I’ve ever owned or played so I don’t know how it stacks up against the rest of them. I’m not sure how the sustain or craftsmanship compares to the other models that have giving this guitar its reputation.

The Story

For my band I needed to have a guitar dropped down 5 half steps, I am too fond of my other guitars to perform this butcherization to them, as we know with a floating tremolo its not so easy to drastically change tunings, you pretty much need a dedicated guitar. So I went looking for a moderately priced big bassy electric to turn into a beast. I found this through-neck Iceman with a whammy to be a pretty great option. At $800 it was just pricey enough to possibly be a legitimate instrument. Yet inexpensive enough to where I was willing to take a chance on it.

The Good

The neck on this thing is seriously wonderful. 24 Giant frets and some pretty nice inlay work. As soon as I picked it up I was very pleased with the playability of this instrument. Its easily as playable as any of my other guitars. Despite being painted, the neck is smooth and fast, it doesn’t seem to stick to my hands like several of the painted Gibson necks I have played.

The Pickups are DiMarzio Evolutions… They seem well balanced with the instrument. I like the sound very much. The harmonics just pop out at you, in a good way.

The rosewood fingerboard isn’t bad, the inlay work looks pretty decent. No complaints there.

It comes with a case, which is invaluable since this guitar is almost impossible to find a case for from what I hear.

I think it looks pretty awesome, I like the headstock and the Oreo pickups are pretty rad as well.

Its quite heavy and has a through neck which should help its sustain a bit. But not heavy enough to make it uncomfortable for me.

The tuners are smooth and precise enough.

Despite the unusual shape I find it comfortable to play while sitting or standing.

The Bad

The guitar is made in Indonesia, this fact sadly shows in the quality of the craftsmanship quite a bit. The bindings are less than perfect, the paint underneath the back plate is peeled, chipped and thin. The screws holding the trem springs in place appear to be inserted at weird arbitrary angles.

The tremolo was not setup very well when it arrived, I had a few very tiny screws just fall off of it and down onto the carpet which was frustrating.

The case that it comes in feels a little flimbsy. But still very usable.

I’m not super fond of the bridge, I would prefer an Edge-Zero or Edge-Pro. But as far as functionality this bridge has worked fine for me. Other than the screws falling out.

None of it is horrible, but for a similar price you can get J-Craft Prestige that is completely flawless. Why couldn’t this guitar have been J-Made?

Includes (Mine came with the following items):

• Wrenches for changing strings and setting up the bridge
• A hard case (with keys)
• An instruction Manual
• An extra tremolo spring
• A pretty lame 1/4inch guitar patch cable (6ft?)
• D’Addario Strings (9-42)

I think that’s everything it came with. I will take another look when I get it back from my technician.

Conclusions

If I were a rockstar, I probably wouldn’t play a guitar this poorly crafted. Which leads me to believe that Sam Totman does not actually play his Signature guitar. I don’t know if he does or not… It certainly is a player’s guitar, it plays great, it sounds great. It looks great from a distance. But it does seem to be less quality than other Ibanezes in the same price range.

I really can’t stress enough how nice the neck feels on this guitar. Its a dream to play. From the moment I picked it up it felt comfortable to me. And it sounds great too. So I mean those two things alone make it a worthwhile instrument. Just don’t expect the same quality you’d see in the prestige series.

Geoffiological Super Rating System (GSRS)

• Craftsmanship 7.5/10
• Playability 9/10
• Soundz 9/10
• StarPower 10/10

What started out as a mild fever and sore throat turned into an abscess in my throat. I was sick for about a week and in terrible pain. When I swallowed it was like swallowing a spiky basketball and when i wasn’t swallowing it was like my throat was on fire. It swelled up so much that it felt like the size of pencil. I could barely talk and even breathing wasn’t as good as it use to be. I had a very painful experience trying to eat a banana. I went to the doctor a few times and got a bunch of meds and now I seem to be doing ok though so things are lookin’ up.

I was able to add another song to the done pile last night. It always seems like this album will take forever to finish, but I actually was gathering kind of a status update and it’s not so bad. Turns out the overall remastering process is somewhere in the ballpark of 50%. A lot of crazy stuff happened in the first half of this year including a 2 month DoD detour. So as long as I don’t have a bunch more things getting in the way the second half should go much faster. Especially since the first half was so very research heavy. Lots of reading and experimentation really slowed the first half down. And the new headphones are making things go a lot faster too because it’s so much easier to make things sound right on a variety of systems (man, i’ve brought that up a lot). Anyway, things are looking good. I’ll be glad to get this album done and out of the way so I can start working on new projects I have on the back burner.

On an unrelated note, I got to finish off a collection yesterday. I was missing the box for Dragon Warrior (NES) and it just came from ebay thus completing my Dragon Warrior/Quest collection. I took some pictures to commemorate it. Here and here. I’m in the middle of playing through the first game and it’s a blast. It’s ridiculously simple. A one-man rpg. Good Times.

The con is over. Good times were had. Jonah posted his pics here. I went in not planning on buying anything, but sure enough I came back with 5 trades and a shirt =P I ended up grabbing the Hsu and Chan trade as well as all 4 of the Penny Arcade books (they had a sale).

I’ve been playing this game “The World Ends With You” quite a bit. For those who aren’t familiar its a Square-Enix ARPG for ds set in modern day japan. First off, I just have to say that it is definitely worth picking up because it is awesome. Second, it has this feature where if you set the game in “mingle mode” and close the ds you can rack up experience for your pins (similar to materia in ff7) with other players (even if theyre playing a different ds game wirelessly). In addition to that, anybody who you run into will have a shop where you can buy copies of the stuff they currently have equipped and when you do it will actually give them the money for it. So lucky for me lots of people were slotting this game during the con and I was able to rack up a ton of experience, money and rare items just from walking around the con while other people were doing the same. A pretty sweet system really.

I’ll be hanging out at Emerald City Comic Con tomorrow if anybody’s in the area. My 2 brothers that run Random Pirate Comics have a table down there so I’m gonna keep ‘em company Saturday and see how the con is in its new location. Geoffio will be there too, both days I think, but I’m only going Saturday.

I had kind of a scare last night when trying to remaster Passion. There was a problem finding my original source files for the song. For a sec I thought I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it and I wasn’t too happy. Luckily, it all worked out in the end. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s sounding much better. The kick is so much more punchy now and that is making a ton of difference.

I hadn’t felt like working on music in quite awhile but lately it’s all I want to do, which is great for album progress. The headphones seem to be a big help because when I mix on them things actually sound good on a variety of setups wheras when I mixed on my old headphones things only sounded good on them. This is making the mix process much less of a chore and much less work.

I spent another 4 hours mixing “A Timeline Eliminated” last night. I think I can throw it in the done pile, but I will see if I end up going back to it later or not. It’s so hard to let go of songs anymore. Nothing ever feels like it’s done. But I really like where the song went. There’s more variety in it and its got a much more professional sound to it.

Chances are the “Random Pirate Comics Show” podcast that I’m part of will be starting up again tonight. We went on a bit of a hiatus for various reasons, Jonah’s gonna be handling the mixing now which will be a big load off me as that use to take my slow computer quite a while to mix down such long files. Anywho, I’ll probably play the new version of timeline on it, of course it will be mono and compressed down to low-fi podcast quality, but you can still catch a preview if you so desire.

So our album is later than we had originally hoped. This has happened for several reasons. Most of those have been related to business on other fronts AKA (Main Finger’s “Mode 7″ album, Dwelling of Duels, Moving, etc). We’ve also been spending a huge amount of time learning how to actually produce music.

Rest assured however, regular progress is still being made on the F-Zero album. And we’ve not given up on it. By this point we’re about 35% done on it or something. But don’t lose hope, because progress will be exponentially increasing as Main Finger finishes his album and we finish up some of the other lose ends we’re working on.

We’re probably not going to be releasing many tracks until they are completely finished. But hopefully we’ll prepare some sort of demo or teaser to listen to. The good news is that we’re learning a ton and that the extra time we’re taking on this album is going to mean that its much higher quality than we had originally planned.

So I just upgraded to a pair of Sony MDR-7509 studio headphones last friday. It’s a bit of a trip. I can hear mid frequencies much better with these. It’s amazing how much these headphones make amateur mixes sound so much worse than professional mixes, but that’s kind of why I got them. They really help me to see the mistakes in my mixing and allow me to fix them.

I worked a bit on “A Timeline Eliminated” (my Chrono Cross/Trigger remix). It’s interesting keeping the balance of tweaking these old songs while still staying true to the original feel they had when I made them (some of which I made 4 years ago now). I had jazzed up a synth lead quite a bit and I had started thinking about whether or not I altered the mood too much, but I really did like how it sounded. It was much more interesting and so I kept it.

This is a public service announcement, in the interest of public safety I beg all to stay away from the beats. They are corrupt. They have been tainted by years of “beating”. The devil invented beats to steal the hearts of America’s Youth.

Noise on the other hand is as faithful as ever. Did you know that noise aids blind people when they cross streets? Noise also lets us know when our food is ready. Noise is innate in man, it gives us a sense of Moral Stability. Even the crappiest of noise teaches our children morals and values and real life situations. Embrace the noise, shun the beats.

That is all.

Thanks.

Hey, so me and Geoffio decided to start a blog for a few reasons (mainly to help get us in the habit for dealing with blogs so much at work). Anywho, time for introductions. I am Main Finger and I do the technoes. My main man Geoffio plays guitars and together we make Noise and a Beat (NAAB). So this blog will be for both NAAB and our solo projects… and miscellaneous crap as well I guess. That’s all for now.