Aristides Baritone Announced: 060B
The Long Awaited Model Is Now Available For Custom Order
Is the Aristides baritone a big deal? Well, just ask everyone who’s requested this for years! Baritone 6-string players are a passionate community of guitarists, & we needed to make sure this project was done just right. The 27″ 060B design is comfortable & features both a clarity & stability guitarists have come to expect from Aristides.
The 060B is available now with special introductory pricing: no upcharge over the standard 060! A build time of 7-9 months for Raw or 10-14 months for Painted finishes is to be expected for this first batch. We are working to add the 060B to our order form soon, but in the meantime you can use the custom order form to order an 060 model & specify “baritone” in the notes, or reach out to us directly with any questions!
Check out the deep dive below & stay tuned for more model releases & behind the scenes deep dives here throughout the year!
060B: Behind The Scenes
Why baritone?
Good question! Baritone guitars have a strong cult following, which is why this is one of our most-requested models over the years. However if you’ve never considered a baritone guitar before, you may not know the benefits!
Longer scale lengths provide a wider intonation for tuning low accurately & have a snappier tone that maintains clarity. This is great not just for tuning way down, but also for keeping a bright tone in tunings like Drop C, or giving you more room on the fretboard if you have large hands. The longer scale length also provides more tension, which can either keep your strings nice & tight, or allow you to utilize lighter strings than normal.
Wouldn’t you just want a 7-string then to hit those low notes? Many players prefer the comfort & simplicity of a 6-string guitar – they just need to go low! “Tune low die slow!” Entire genres of music have been built up around the baritone guitar.
To make sure you can go as low as you need, we chose 27″ for the 060B which is even longer than our 26.5″ 070! Of course if you want a 7-string for going extra-low, we still have you covered with the multiscale 070S & H/07 which are 27″ on the bass side.
Is it really a big deal to change something like scale length?
Major specs such as neck profile & scale length are ‘fixed’ on our guitars not only due to the molded nature of our instruments’ construction but also because every design change is carefully considered. You could see how things like “060 with reverse headstock & thicker neck profile” could quickly add up to a lot of expensive & time-consuming mold variations for us, but it’s really the research & development behind these changes that matters most! Even the standard 060 has experienced a lot of small tweaks over the last decade to further improve tolerances & tweak ergonomics. So the 060B wasn’t simply a matter of making a new mold; it had to be done right.
We are committed in the long run to offering more of this customization. For example, when working on our new S/B flagship base lineup, we wanted to ensure that 4, 5, & 6 string models were available, & with a wide variety of pickup options. The original 050 was 5-string only & could only accept J-style pickups! So this is something we are always thinking about.
The 060B is an early example of us investing resources in developing new model ‘variations,’ because so far we’ve been busy working on entirely new models for you! Seeing the final design, we trust it was worth the wait.
