Candy tangerine

[Stew]

Well here it is ...
Not great pics at the moment but I'll post some more next week if anyone is interested.

I am LOVIN' this neck! The feel of raw wood is just fantastic and the stainless frets are great. I'm lovin' the colour too—check out the orange-red streaks and how well they go with the body.

Went together ok apart from a couple of minor hiccups.
One of the tuner guide holes was slightly off centre so the G string tuner is a little out of line. The 'edge of the box' cardboard guide that came with the Sperzel tuners was worse than useless so I used a metal ruler to mark up the points and obviously was a little bit out on that one. A bit disappointing but it works ok.

This was my first time doing the complete wiring on a guitar and it was more complicated than I'd thought. The setup is master vol, master tone (Stellartone tone styler) and rotary selector to do various non-standard pickup combos. It was pretty tricky getting it all in there—particularly after I realised that the rotary wouldn't fit in the third pot position because there's not enough clearance in the cavity and I had to swap the rotary with the tone control! Managed to get it all in there eventually and it all works but the bridge pickup is sounding quite a bit thinner than the other two so it loks like I'm going to have to open her up again!

Apart from that (and the fact that I was shi**ing myself everytime I had to drill a hole) it all went pretty smoothly. Definitely a learning experience and definitely something that I'll do again.

It plays pretty nicely now with my beginners set up ... can't wait 'til I get it properly set up in the next week or two ... it's gonna be killer  :headbang:

Final specs:
Alder body, candy tangerine finish, Wilkinson VS100
Canary on canary 59 roundback with 6105 SS frets and Tusq XL nut and Sperzel locking tuners
Pickups—Bill Lawrence NF singles
Deaf-Eddie's rotary pickup selector—Custom Fat-O-Caster M3 (aka The Jersey Mod)—gives standard start 5-way set up plus; B+M+N, B+N, M+(B*N), B*N, N*M, B*M
Stellartone Tonestyler as master tone control.

Here's the pics ... I'm off to plan my Les Paul ... or was that a Tele, maybe a short scale J bass ... ... ...

 

[Synderz]

Wow! That came out extremely well! :hello2:

The figuring on that canary is gorgeous. :toothy12:

 

[Cagey]

Nice job! I wouldn't have done it much different myself. But, I'm gonna have to now <grin>

 

[blueruins]

Great pairing...really nice guitar!!

 

[DangerousR6]

Stew my friend, has your neck plate arrived...? :icon_scratch:

 

[Stew]

Stew my friend, has your neck plate arrived...? :icon_scratch:

Didn't make it in time  :sad:
Good ol' USPS ... in my experience it takes anything from 5 days to 5 weeks to get packages from the States to Aus. I'll get my setup guy to put it on in the next week or so when he gives this baby a final tweak.

Gonna have to pull a few things apart again anyway:

• Need to reset the truss rod side adjust as I've backed it right off and the fretboard is still slightly raised (fretting out a little). Didn't find the instruction for this until AFTER she was all bolted together!
• Bridge pickup is sounding very thin compared to mid and neck, so I think I've screwed the wiring somehow :dontknow:
• Also while the neck's off I need to finish removing the protective plastic from the pickguard—didn't think of that before I screwed everything down (you can see it between the neck pickup and the end of the fretboard).

Can't complain though if that's the worst of my rookie mistakes  :laughing7:

 

[DangerousR6]

Stew my friend, has your neck plate arrived...? :icon_scratch:

Didn't make it in time  :sad:
Good ol' USPS ... in my experience it takes anything from 5 days to 5 weeks to get packages from the States to Aus. I'll get my setup guy to put it on in the next week or so when he gives this baby a final tweak.

Gonna have to pull a few things apart again anyway:

• Need to reset the truss rod side adjust as I've backed it right off and the fretboard is still slightly raised (fretting out a little). Didn't find the instruction for this until AFTER she was all bolted together!
• Bridge pickup is sounding very thin compared to mid and neck, so I think I've screwed the wiring somehow :dontknow:
• Also while the neck's off I need to finish removing the protective plastic from the pickguard—didn't think of that before I screwed everything down (you can see it between the neck pickup and the end of the fretboard).

Can't complain though if that's the worst of my rookie mistakes  :laughing7:

But it's there? :dontknow:

 

[Stew]

Stew my friend, has your neck plate arrived...? :icon_scratch:

Didn't make it in time  :sad:
Good ol' USPS ... in my experience it takes anything from 5 days to 5 weeks to get packages from the States to Aus. I'll get my setup guy to put it on in the next week or so when he gives this baby a final tweak.

But it's there? :dontknow:

Not as of Friday 20th  :sad1:

 

[DangerousR6]

Stew my friend, has your neck plate arrived...? :icon_scratch:

Didn't make it in time  :sad:
Good ol' USPS ... in my experience it takes anything from 5 days to 5 weeks to get packages from the States to Aus. I'll get my setup guy to put it on in the next week or so when he gives this baby a final tweak.

But it's there? :dontknow:

Not as of Friday 20th  :sad1:

Hmmmm, hopefully it'll make it sometime next week. I'd have thought it had made it by now. For as much as the USPS charges to ship to Aussieland you'd think they could do it in a timely manner... :doh:

 

[imminentG]

Just BRILLIANT. I immediately sought to copy this! I would not out of respect, but that's a really great sign that something here is really right!  :hello2:

 

[Ace Flibble]

You know, once the Warmoth metal logo has stuck on properly, the plastic sheet on top of it can be (carefully) pulled off leaving only the actual letters stuck on. So you don't need to have that square of plastic stuck on there. Just make sure the letters are stuck on properly because if they come off or shift with the cover at all then you're boned.

But nice guitar anyhoo.

 

[Stew]

You know, once the Warmoth metal logo has stuck on properly, the plastic sheet on top of it can be (carefully) pulled off leaving only the actual letters stuck on. So you don't need to have that square of plastic stuck on there. Just make sure the letters are stuck on properly because if they come off or shift with the cover at all then you're boned.

But nice guitar anyhoo.

:laughing7: yeah, fixed that now Ace ... it only took me two weeks to realise you could peel the top off  :doh:
... and I did manage to peel off some of the letters too. Fortunately just on the 'Made in USA' bit so I removed all of that and just left Warmoth  :icon_thumright:

... and BTW my neck plate DID arrive (about two days after Doug and I were discussing it here). It finishes the guitar of perfectly! I'll post some pics when I get my ass in gear!

 

[Assumer]

Do you think the SS frets make the guitar much brighter?  Great looking guitar.

 

[anorakDan]

I am so in love with that color!

 

[Stew]

Do you think the SS frets make the guitar much brighter?  Great looking guitar.

Hard to say. I only have an Ibanez Les Paul to compare it to and it's definitely brighter. But that's probably more to do with canary/alder/single coils vs mahogany/humbuckers than frets. They are very nice to play though ... Smooth as  :icon_thumright:

 

[Corey P.]

I'm not sure how I missed this thread, but I absolutely love the way this looks - gorgeous grain on the neck and the color is awesome.

Re: Canary, what would you say the feel most compares to as far as more common wood options?

 

[Stew]

@Corey: this is my first experience with a raw neck so I can't really compare it to anything. It feels much slicker than any finished neck I've ever played but also has a nice 'woodiness' to the feel.

I can imagine that some raw necks (maybe ebony or pau) would feel so slick it's almost like glass. This isn't like that, but I must say it's getting smoother every day.

Unfortunately it's got a little back bow going on (even with the truss rod backed right off) so I've just taken it off to ship back to Warmoth for them to check it out.

I'm gonna miss playing this baby over the coming weeks 

 

[Corey P.]

Ah, that's a bummer.  Good luck getting it resolved quickly; I'm sure W. will make things right.

I appreciate the feedback - it's such a great look, and as you said raw wood is so nice in terms of both the tactile experience and the relative speed vs. hard finishes.  My new bass is going to be my first instrument with a raw neck, and I'm excited just from holding it without even being bolted to the body yet about what it'll be like to play.  Canary is definitely a contender for me for my next build (a guitar; no idea what kind yet.  One made of wood, I think?).

 

[Strat Avenger]

SS frets do not make the guitar significantly brighter. That is a MYTH.

 

[Cagey]

SS frets do not make the guitar significantly brighter. That is a MYTH.

Right. I have several necks with SS frets on them and I can't tell any difference at all in normal play as far as "tone". But, I do seem to hear slightly more articulation or presence on hammered/tapped/pulled notes. It doesn't change the tone at all, it just seems to flatten out the dynamics when you're using those techniques to get a legato effect, or the sense that you're picking more notes than you are. Since there seems to be more attack to the unpicked notes, they tend to sound more as if they're picked and close to the same SPL as actual picked notes. I mean, not really picked, just not quite as subtle as is usual for those kinds of notes.

Of course, that could be me looking for it. It may not really be there because I went into the whole SS fret thing with more than a little scepticism. But, along with that scepticism came a real desire to hear a difference that as it turns out, isn't there. They just feel better and last longer. For the $20 Warmoth charges to put those on vs. nickel-steel, it's a no-brainer. Do the SS every time. I can't think of a single reason to ever use the nickel-silvers other than they won't put stainless on a bound neck. But, that's just Warmoth. You could get somebody else to do it. It's not like it's impossible. It's just time-consuming and tool-killing and therefore expensive.