Speaker A
Hey there, Andy with you. Today we're taking a look at the Aeroband guitar.
In-depth review of the Aeroband MIDI guitar covering features, pros, cons, and practical use cases for guitarists and music tech enthusiasts.
Key Takeaways
- Aeroband provides a solid MIDI guitar experience with real strings and good built-in speaker quality.
- It excels in tuning stability and ease of use for experimenting with different tunings.
- MIDI connectivity and app configurability expand its versatility but may introduce latency and compatibility issues.
- Some hardware limitations include lack of tone control, crude mute bar, and no vibrato.
- Best suited for guitarists interested in MIDI tech, live use, recording, and music education despite some drawbacks.
Summary
- The Aeroband is a plastic MIDI guitar with a solid-feeling neck and real strings for authentic playability.
- It features built-in speaker with good volume and resonance, drum machine with multiple sounds, and app-configurable settings via USB-C and Bluetooth.
- Supports hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, and palm mutes with a single mute bar, though the mute functionality is limited.
- Includes a virtual capo, multiple control knobs, microphone and headphone inputs, and around eight internal sounds.
- MIDI functionality allows wireless connection to phones and computers for expanded sound options, though external connections may introduce latency.
- Pros include always being in tune, detachable neck, sensitivity controls, and easy experimentation with open tunings without tuning issues.
- Cons include lack of tone control on the instrument, crude mute bar, no vibrato, and challenges with MIDI output compatibility, especially on Mac with Sound Slice.
- The instrument is not a traditional guitar but offers unique advantages for live performance, recording, and music education.
- The reviewer highlights the practical use of the Aeroband for inputting notes into Guitar Pro and Sound Slice as a guitar teacher.
- Overall, the Aeroband is a fun and functional MIDI guitar with some limitations that may affect advanced users.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I am a fan of MIDI guitars from way back. I had the old Roland V-Guitar.
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I've also tried out the MIDI guitar app by Jam Origin. I love tech and toys.
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And when we cross that over with my other love of guitar, you get something like the Aeroband.
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So, I'm going to dig into all the good and the bad about the Aeroband, but first I'm going to flash on the screen all of the techy details.
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Because that is not what this video is about, it is a review.
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So, if you want any of those details, those are on the screen now for you to take a look at.
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Be sure to pause, and then we'll dig back into the actual review.
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So, to give you a little bit of context about how I think about a MIDI guitar, I think about it having four potential uses.
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The first one is just plain old fun.
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The second one is using it live.
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The next one is for recording purposes, especially if you're not particularly great with keys.
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It can be great to be just a guitarist, but inputting keys lines with virtual instruments and that sort of thing.
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And the other one, which is actually very relevant for me as a guitar teacher and all that sort of thing.
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Is inputting notes in Guitar Pro and Sound Slice, which is something I do a lot of the time.
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So that's a very practical use case.
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So my first impressions when I opened the box for the Aeroband.
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With it being plastic, it is made of plastic.
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Is, you know, there's always that question of, does it feel like a toy?
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And I was pleasantly surprised, it feels pretty darn solid.
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Especially this side.
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This end is a little bit light, which I'll touch on a little bit later.
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But it feels solid, like the neck, the neck feels just as strong as a real guitar.
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Which is very impressive.
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I'm assuming there must be some metal going on on the inside there.
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But that was definitely something that impressed me.
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Secondly, is the strings up here, that is something that's a little bit different to some MIDI guitars that are available.
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Where we have this form factor of the guitar, but here, rather than some sort of little knob that you toggle or something.
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It is actually strings that we've got up here, and it feels, it makes a really big difference.
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Makes you feel like you're playing a guitar having these strings here.
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The third first impression that stuck out to me is as soon as I switched the thing on, I was quite impressed by the speaker.
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It has some oomph.
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And we also have some holes in the back there, so we get a bit of resonance that kind of feels like an acoustic guitar.
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You get to feel it and not just hear it.
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But also, the volume as well.
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Often with any sort of smaller device that has a speaker in it, is the volume you can't take it very loud without the audio breaking up.
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But I was quite surprised with the volume.
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Not that you want to play this loud, but that is something that stuck out to me.
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So looking at some of the key features of the Aeroband.
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It is able to emulate hammer-ons and pull-offs, which is nice.
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We can also do slides.
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And we can also do palm mutes of sorts, using this bar that we've got over here.
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I will note though, that it is a single bar.
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So it's very all or nothing.
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It would be nice to have an individual sensor for each of these strings that we've got here.
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It has a drum machine built into it.
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And around about eight sounds inbuilt.
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It is app configurable to change various settings either by connecting it to your computer with a USB-C cable.
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Which is down here near the guitar input, and that's important to note as well.
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We have the ability to plug a regular guitar lead into it and plug it into an amp, which is good.
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And we have Bluetooth 5.1 or 5.3 to connect it to your phone to configure those settings.
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It contains a drum machine on board, which you can trigger right here.
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And it has various drum loops there, and speed control as well as volume control.
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So a nice amount of control there for your drum machine.
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We have our sound control over here with this main button that we've got.
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We have a virtual capo, so up and down with these two that we've got here.
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And the controls work well between a few knobs that we've got here.
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We've got our overall volume knob, and then we've got our secondary knob.
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And also on the top, we have a microphone input, a little interesting.
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As well as a headphones input there as well, which can be nice.
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A lot of people opt for with their electric guitar a little, um, mini headphone amp.
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So that's kind of what this does, except without needing an additional piece of gear.
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There is around about eight sounds that are inside the Aeroband.
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We have the ability through the wonders of MIDI to be able to connect it to our phone or our computer.
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And then trigger as many MIDI sounds as we want from there.
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Obviously, we do get a little bit more delay there as soon as you're connecting it to an external device.
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On to some of the pros of the Aeroband.
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First of all, it is always in tune because it is an electronic instrument.
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It is not a regular guitar.
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So there's no tuning needed.
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It is detachable, you can detach this neck from this body.
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With this funky little button that we've got there in the middle.
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As we mentioned already.
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It is a MIDI guitar.
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So it has MIDI functionality.
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We have the wireless MIDI as well.
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We have the guitar cable input, as I mentioned already.
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And within the settings, we also have some control over the sensitivity of when you play these strings.
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Which is a nice little feature there.
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Now, I love open tunings.
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And on the guitar, one of the annoyances is as soon as you do an open tuning on your guitar.
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Is there's going to be tuning issues as the strings get used to that new tension that you've set up there.
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So that's a really nice perk that I like about the Aeroband.
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You can go sampling and messing around with different tunings.
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Very, very quickly without any issues of tuning and without the time of tuning your guitar to different tunings as well.
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On to the cons.
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Now, this is going to be very personal.
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I've checked out a few other people's reviews and it's interesting what jumps out for different people.
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But here's my cons.
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First of all, is there's no tone control.
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You would think with an electronic instrument that there'd be some sort of tone control.
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Yes, you can plug it in to your amp or whatever else, you know, um, plug it in externally.
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And then have tone controls from there.
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But it would be really nice to have the control here on the instrument.
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The mute bar is quite crude.
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It would be nice to have an individual sensor.
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And it isn't even taken advantage of for some sounds.
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It would be nice, for instance, if you're using a piano sound or something other than one of the guitars where it essentially doesn't seem to do much.
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Is to be able to simply make that be a staccato feature.
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So that it's nice short notes.
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As guitarists, we always tend to kind of think of muting guitar as a game of both this hand and this hand.
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I can play a note.
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And I can cut it off.
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By releasing grip.
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But that's only half of the equation.
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Yes, you do need to get used to using an instrument that is not a guitar.
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There is no qualms about it.
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You know, it is not a guitar, it is in the form factor of a guitar, but that is definitely a limitation.
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There's no vibrato.
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That is something that you definitely do need to, um, you know, factor into the situation.
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And for me, a big letdown was I spent a couple of hours trying really hard to get it to work with inputting notes into Sound Slice.
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And for some reason, it has a dual MIDI output.
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And on Mac at least, you can't disable, uh, just one of these MIDI outputs.
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And so what tends to happen is each note that is triggered, one of these MIDI outputs inputs the note.
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And then immediately after, the next output switches it off.
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Or when I do a little bit of configuring within Sound Slice, is the other option was I got double of all the notes.
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Now, is that partly a little bit of a, you know, issue with Sound Slice as, uh, as well?
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Yes, it is.
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But I spent hours trying to, you know, get other apps as, you know, intermediaries and that sort of thing, and yeah, basically, I came to the conclusion that it's just easier to input the notes on the screen with their virtual, uh, fretboard.
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Which was a real disappointment because for me.
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Uh, using Sound Slice is something that I spend hours each week doing, and I was really hoping that I was going to be able to use the Aeroband for that, uh, feature.
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And I was told there's no ability to switch off one of the MIDI outputs.
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So, for now, that is how it is.
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Next is the uneven weight.
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This body feels a lot like an electric guitar.
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But the neck, even though it is nice and solid, is so incredibly light.
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I would love it if there was a bit more weight here.
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I think surely some of the electronics that are in here could have been placed in here to give it a better weight distribution.
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This feels great.
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This feels like a toy.
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Not out of flimsiness, but purely out of the weight.
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The next one that is a biggie is that the USB-C cable down here next to our regular guitar input.
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Really needs to be recessed.
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When you think about the different ways that guitar cables have been set up on electric guitars.
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There's a few options.
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There is this standard method that we've got here, you notice I'm using a little right angle cable.
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So I don't have that classic issue of, you know, banging the thing.
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And doing damage to the instrument.
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There is the old style way of sort of putting it more on the front here.
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Yes, that's ugly.
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But it's probably a better option to avoid that issue there, especially for a USB-C cable.
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And the other way is simply to recess it inside because USB-C cables can be quite short.
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So that is a biggie and definitely a danger that you want to be aware of.
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Lastly, the big downer that really jumps out for me.
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Is I, I have feet in both camps.
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I like the Aeroband.
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It has a lot to offer.
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But it has issues as well, and one that really stands out that a lot of people probably won't even mention.
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Is this issue.
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When you're dealing with a virtual instrument, basically something that has been sampled to some degree.
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The way that it works in my crude wording is basically.
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Uh, our velocity spectrum of 0 to 127, so our volume as we're inputting notes.
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When we have a virtual instrument, it gets sampled at various levels of how hard the instrument is played.
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I can only hear about four different samples in there.
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And some of them, it's really weird, midway are a lot brighter than notes that are louder.
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So if I go through and play some notes, have a little listen.
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See how many different samples you can hear inside of this.
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Hear the change?
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I'll play a different string.
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There's not a lot going on there.
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And so when I handed the Aeroband to a mate to play.
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He had an interesting little, uh, situation happen that I thought that was just my head playing tricks on me.
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Was as you get there and play chords, because these velocities.
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Kind of have different sounds in them from the different samples.
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Uh, lacking a clean crossover.
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It almost sounds like.
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Is it in Drop D?
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And I said, no.
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But I had the same feeling as well, because.
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There's just a lack of samples in this velocity range.
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So, the reason why this is a biggie for me is for moments.
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I play the Aeroband and I feel like I'm playing a guitar and I'm really in the moment and having fun.
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But in an instant, I can suddenly get taken out of that wonderful joy.
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It's kind of like when you're watching a good movie and then maybe a character comes on and it's not a very good actor.
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And you're like, oh, I'm definitely watching a movie.
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When a moment ago, you were really like buying what was happening.
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It's the same sort of thing.
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You are kind of buying into the illusion that you're playing a guitar.
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And that constantly takes me out of it again and again.
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And this is after about a month of playing the Aeroband.
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I thought, you know, this might kind of dissipate a little bit.
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But it hasn't.
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Another little part of the illusion, which is a smaller factor, is the latency.
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It's not bad.
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But for on board sounds, I think it could definitely be better.
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There's just a little bit of lag there.
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And the faster you play, the more you're going to notice that.
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So who is the Aeroband for?
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I don't think it's good for beginner guitarists.
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Making the transition from the Aeroband to a regular guitar, I don't think that's a realistic transition.
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They are so different.
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And originally it seemed like that the Aeroband was very much targeted at beginner guitarists.
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And it's not a guitar.
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And they copped some real, uh, real flack from a lot of people who were reviewing the Aeroband from coming out at it from that angle of trying to, you know, sell it as a guitar.
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And as a, a stepping stone, that sort of thing.
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Whereas there's too many differences there.
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I don't think it's fitting for studio musicians because of those technical issues that I was talking about.
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It's just not good enough.
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And if you change over the functionality in the settings for it to have hammer-ons and pull-offs.
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Currently.
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I've got it set up so that there's no hammer-ons or pull-offs.
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If you do configure it for those to be switched on, I find I just get too many of these accidental notes coming out that you don't want there.
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So I switched it off while I was doing this video.
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And so, yeah, it might be able to work, you can get there and do some MIDI cleanup afterwards.
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But I feel it's just too far away from, you know, a real guitar.
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If you're trying to do it for that purpose, or if you're using it for, you know, a studio purpose.
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To input sounds.
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Maybe you just get a keys player to do it.
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Anyway, or if you're stuck with you, I feel like there's excessive cleanup that's needed there.
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Of getting rid of notes, and all of these little velocity issues.
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I don't think it's great for a studio musician.
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Next is, uh, maybe for performers or people doing home recording.
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Obviously, uh, as a home recorder, you know, maybe you're not great on the keyboard.
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And so you're heaps better on the guitar.
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That's the one instrument that you play.
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In that case, you might be able to kind of negotiate those issues that I said.
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For, you know, a studio musician.
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And the situation that I think that it absolutely would be great for is for elderly people, in particular, if you have arthritis and you have pain with your fingers.
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The whole factor of how it was originally marketed as, you know, the easy alternative, no sore fingers, that sort of thing.
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I appreciate that for an older person who has arthritis, incredibly hard to get there and play, play guitar with the difficulty that that gives you with your fingers and the pain.
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And so I love the Aeroband as an alternative there for someone who has finger pain.
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Whether it's from arthritis or other issues.
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It's still not going to take away the wrist issues.
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Which, you know, do come up for some people as they're learning guitar.
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But the fact that you don't have to squeeze probably helps with the wrist issue because for a lot of people.
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It's the squeezing with the fingers which then also puts tension into their wrist.
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And so I really like it for, for that sort of use case.
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Which is a very particular use case.
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So what is the verdict?
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It is a confused instrument.
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It's part toy, it feels like at times.
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And it's part high-end MIDI guitar that does things that other MIDI guitars haven't done before.
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So it's really weird, it has this foot in two different camps that are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
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I know I'm going to use the Aeroband for fun and picking it up.
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I've found myself taking it into lounge and playing little ditties, you know, playing like little piano arrangements on what is physically a guitar.
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And entertaining my family.
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Which I didn't expect that out of the novelty factor, which is really good.
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But it keeps me, keeps on taking me out of the moment with those little issues that are there.
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I feel like some of these could be fixed with.
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Um, with firmware updates.
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Some of them are physical, like I said, the weight.
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That's not going to change with a firmware update.
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But there has already been updates made via firmware.
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And updates made to the actual unit.
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So, I am definitely keen to see where Aeroband go.
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And hopefully they do keep on improving it.
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I'm keen to try, you know, future iterations.
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If Aeroband wants to get a, uh, a future model out to me.
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Because I feel like it could tick the boxes.
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If they make those adjustments.
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I'm a little worried because it feels like the things that are a little bit off.
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Suggest to me that this wasn't made by a guitarist.
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It feels like it was made by a company.
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Because some things are done really well, and some things are just like these head scratchers.
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Like some of the, the app features where it was targeted originally at beginner guitarists.
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That angle has changed now.
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But I really do have hope for the Aeroband because it has a bunch of good aspects to it.
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The potential is there, it has a place, and it bounces for me between fun and frustration.
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But I really have hope for the Aeroband and I look forward to trying future iterations of it.
Topics:AerobandMIDI guitarguitar reviewmusic technologyguitar MIDI controllerwireless MIDIguitar teaching toolsdigital guitarguitar recordingmusic gear review
