Black Dye Flame Maple 2hb strat!

[tfarny]

Here she is, my first (of 4!) summer projects all completed. I still need to do a final setup and tighten a couple of things down.

Neck: custom order, maple / ebony, no dots, other than that the standard stuff. Oh, my first time with SS frets. Wow I really like. I wish they made em in 6130 though.
Body: on closeout, "substandard flame" maple top / 3 pc. alder back
Stuff: PW tuners, SD jazz / custom 5, 5 way switch gives me yer 3 normal hb pup choices plus outer coils split / parallel, inner coils split / parallel.

I got a lot of the parts at a huge discount and the body was cheap, so I figured it'd be fun to make this and probably just resell it for cost, more or less.

I got to play around with dye, get more experience spraying nitro, check out ss frets, a cool pup switching option, use PW tuners, and hone my warmoth-ocity all at once. Plus it killed time!

 

[RLW]

Purtier than a speckled pup!

 

[tfarny]

Notable things this time around:
1. Like the Wilkinson 2-hole trem! That's probably the nicest trem I've used. super good action, quality materials, highly recommended.
2. I'm getting better at the soldering - this one worked right the first time I tried it, and it was even a slightly funky setup.
3. Like the SS frets - I was a skeptic but now I'm sold. I just wish they made the medium jumbos.
4. Damn nitro takes a long time to dry! I've already scratched this thing a few times just setting it up. Feels great but it's still soft soft soft. Should have just waited another full week or so.

 

[tfarny]

Not quite sure how I like the paint job, the back is dye too, I guess it's "trans black" if you want to make it sound cool.
Cool thing: normally I would have preferred a really black ebony board, but the gray streaks in this board really really worked with this paint job.

 

[tfarny]

Finally, my token gripe: These parts overall, especially the neck, were absolutely superb. But the precut graphite nut needed a lot of help before it was playable. This is the fourth warmoth nut I've had, and the others were all at least playable out of the box, as you'd expect given their advertising. This was way, way too high and needed some serious filing to get the slots anywhere near a normal height. For a slide-only setup it would have been perfect. I'll have to go back and file this sucker down and still probably lower them some more. Hope you can see how deep a gouge I had to make in this thing.

 

[NonsenseTele]

Amazing!  :cool01:

 

[Wana_make_a_guitar]

:icon_thumright:

 

[DocNrock]

Nice handiwork!  Givent the components, I bet it sounds great.  :cool01:

 

[GoDrex]

After getting my neck the way it was there's no way I'd ever expect a nut from Warmoth to be ready to play.

But damn I like that guitar. If I had the money I'd snatch that up from you. :headbang1:

 

[m4rk0]

Really nice!
Great finish, and I really like the clean fb look!

 

[dbw]

Very pretty!  Does the inner coil split sound any different than the outer coil?

 

[blue313]

Wow, very nice indeed!  :rock-on:

 

[tfarny]

Thanks everybody! Yeah it turned out good, and sound-wise it's really versatile. Personally I love the sound of the jazz, and find the custom 5 a bit too much for me - kinda sterile (?).  But I always prefer mellower pickups, so take that as just my opinion. I also haven't really dialed in any particular amp tones for this guitar, so given time I may come to like the custom 5 too. The inner and outer splits are pretty similar, but you can tell the difference, I just can't describe it. What I like about the switching is there's just the one switch to deal with.

GoDrex, you sound pretty traumatized by that binding experience! Understandable though. My gripe is that they advertise the precut nuts as "We are able to input all the variables for each specific neck and create a nearly perfect nut for each, compensated for fret height, nut width, fingerboard radius, etc.". Yet the slots were so high initially you could barely play an F chord. You can buy preslotted graphtech nuts from stew mac here, and superglue is cheap! http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Nuts,_saddles/String_nuts/Graph_Tech_Nuts.html

I'm just glad I already had bought the nut slotting files and the Erlewine book.

 

[GoDrex]

I am traumatized.  :tard:

 

[tfarny]

Better pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tfarny/sets/72157605182993591/

Plus here's a better pic of the digging I had to do on the nut.

 

[dbw]

Yeah that's some extreme filing you had to do.

I have a Custom 5 in the bridge opposite a '59... I felt much the same way at first but I like it now.  It's got a little sharper edge so it can cut through a band.

 

[DangerousR6]

Very well done tf, the flame really stands out in the second pic alot better than the first. :icon_thumright: But I think an all wenge neck would have been 

And where's your "W" plate...... :dontknow:

 

[tfarny]

Yeah I thought about contacting you, dangerous, but I don't want to brand this with a "warmoth" brand - I'm gonna sell it as a 'custom shop' (hopefully :toothy11. Maybe you could come up with a custom logo for me someday, but it's a little too late for this one. Catch you next time.  :icon_thumright:

 

[DangerousR6]

Yeah I thought about contacting you, dangerous, but I don't want to brand this with a "warmoth" brand - I'm gonna sell it as a 'custom shop' (hopefully :toothy11. Maybe you could come up with a custom logo for me someday, but it's a little too late for this one. Catch you next time.  :icon_thumright:

You allready used up the 3 "W"'s you got from me? :dontknow:

 

[tfarny]

Yup. One on my goldtop gold strat, silver one for my upcoming "One Warmoth to rule them all" LP, and the black one for the dinky PJ bass I'll finish someday. Ive got a ridiculous number of new and half-finished guitars here.