Here’s some video of me noodling around with my custom Warmoth strat so you can hear how it sounds. I’m thrilled with this guitar! It’s my new #1, and the build quality has exceeded my (admittedly already high) expectations. The folks at Warmoth are true pros, friendly and very helpful. Slider’s pickups, well…I can’t say enough good things about ‘em. Stewmac is another go-to for great guitar parts & expert, friendly support. Lastly, if you’re considering your own build, I highly recommend spending some quality time with the great folks at UnofficialWarmoth.com.
Posts Tagged ‘warmoth’
It’s Alive!: Custom Strat Project, Part 6
She’s done! I was able to get the guitar finished in time to play it at my gig Sunday.
The Neck:
The Warmoth Pro neck was amazingly easy to install and adjust. It’s not like you need to adjust your guitar neck a whole lot, but it is really handy to have the adjustment on the side. This Canary neck is my first “naked” neck. Maple necks require a finish but this wood does not. Wow, what a difference! The neck feels incredible, and I can feel the string vibrations much more strongly on it. The Pau Ferro fingerboard is also silky smooth and of course the grain of both woods look fantastic. I’m very impressed with the build quality.
Finishing Electronics: Custom Strat Part 5
Progress continues on my Warmoth Mary Kaye Strat. I finished the electronics and installed the neck last night. I was a little rushed and had to head out so I didn’t get the best pictures, but here’s what I have.
An Unexpected Problem
After loading it up and setting it in place, the pickguard hung over the neck pocket by about a millimeter. I noticed this when I drilled the holes for the pickguard. I tried to slide it back, but the mid tone pot (and possibly the pickups, I couldn’t tell) had no give. So I decided to drill and deal with it later. Well, now it is later! After sleeping on this one, I decided to use my hobby knife and carefully “whittle” away the millimeter of pickguard over the neck pocket. This turned out to be a great solution. The pickguard was easy to work with, and unless you look closely (which you can’t because it’s hidden by the fingerboard, HA!), you’d never know I had to cut the pickguard at all.
Electronics: Custom Strat Part 4
I got started on the soldering today, but didn’t finish. I have some family things going on as well as a gig this weekend. Not bad problems to have! 
After loading the pickguard, I began soldering the pickups (pups) and pots to the switch. I didn’t get to the ground connections yet, but I’m going to use the star grounding setup as illustrated in Quieting the Beast.
One nice tidbit I picked up from Jason at Musician’s Den, who has a whole detailed series of YouTube vids on doing a DIY Warmoth build: Use a piece of heat-shrink tubing to help organize the pup wires. It makes for a nice, neat wiring job.
Once again, the guitarnuts.com site has been extremely helpful with this part of the build. In particular, their wiring diagrams are as straightforward and easy to understand as they come.
Tuners: Custom Strat Part 3
A Quick Note on Shielding:
After finishing up the shielding, I wanted to take a break from electronics for a bit, so I decided to install the tuners on the headstock. By the way, my main info source for shielding and wiring is the relatively famous Quieting the Beast: Shielding a Strat article on GuitarNutz.com. That site is a treasure trove of helpful info on guitar electronics.
Go Naked!:
Here’s a little info about the neck for this guitar. Most of my electric guitars have had maple necks with either rosewood or (in one case) ebony fingerboards. My intention was to go maple/rosewood with this build, too. However, the more I read over at unofficialwarmoth.com, the more intrigued I was by people choosing exotic woods, especially canary necks with pau ferro fingerboards. Canary has a lot of the properties of maple, but it doesn’t require finishing. Many of the guys on these boards swear by these ‘naked’ necks, and to be honest, I LOVE the look of canary. So I went for it and ordered a canary/pau ferro neck. It is stunning, and feels great! I can’t wait to get some strings on it.