Eventually finished my first Warmoth project!

[ibanezsicko]

Hi there,

Some of you may remember my earlier post in the 'out of the box' section. Well.. she's finally done, and she's an absolute beauty!  :toothy10:
I intended to post some pics of my progress but, unfortunately, just didnt get round to posting them.

Putting the guitar together went reasonably smoothly. A major concern of mine, before purchasing the body and neck, was that they might not fit together correctly, but Warmoth did a fantastic job and everything fits PERFECTLY.

I have used a thin coating of tru-oil on the swamp ash just to bring out the grain a little bit. I think it's come up really well. Unfortunatley, the lighting in my house is terrible and the pictures dont do this guitar any justice whatsoever.

Let me know what you think.  :icon_smile:

 

[MUYFUE]

nice and kleen! I approve!
ahhaha

What tuners?

 

[ibanezsicko]

Hi, i just used some cheap 'axetec' locking tuners. They seem really decent. Keeps in tune no problem.
Although, one of the supplied screws snapped during the installation, not good! lol

But the tuners themselves are real good, especially for the price (around £25 delivered).

 

[m4rk0]

I love it!! tell us a bit more though.. what is the pickup... did you hide a vol knob somewhere?
did you fill the ash before the tru oil? did you finish the neck?

 

[ibanezsicko]

Cheers for the comments guys!

The neck..
The maple has been finished in tru-oil to a point. the tru-oil was applied, left to dry and sanded back a bit until i was satisfied that the wood was protected, looked great and felt smooooth.
The headstock was given a few extra coats of tru-oil until i liked the colour with the body. It was then sanded a little more, some finishing wax was applied and was buffed until smooth and shiny. Looks really nice, cant really see much in the pics 
The ebony feels really good, the frets are levelled and the nut is now sorted. Best neck ive ever played on!

The body..
The swamp ash was only sanded before the tru-oil went on. Still feels really smooth though, feels really great.
The pickup is a dimarzio breed, imo, a trully excellent sounding pickup.
The bridge is the Tonepros TOM.
I have no volume or tone knobs whatsoever. I wanted the guitar clean and simple.

 

[ironeddie]

No switches or knobs or nothing eh...  Does that make your pickup sound a little thicker?

 

[ibanezsicko]

Yer, certainly does. Sounds a little hotter than it does in my Warlock with a volume knob.
Definately a noticeable amount louder, had to turn the input down a bit on my gear.

 

[whyachi]

Very minimalist, and I love that.  :kewlpics:

 

[dmraco]

nice clean job. 

I have a BREED in one of my builds...I cannot image it sound fatter!!

 

[chrisg]

Nice build - I like the black hardware with the minimalist look.  How much sanding did you do on the body before the tru-oil?  How many coats of tru-oil did you use?

 

[ibanezsicko]

Hey, thank you all for your great comments  :icon_smile:

The swamp ash was sanded quite a bit. I cannot remember the exact grade that was used by the end, but it was very very smooth and only one coat of tru-oil went on the body.

Originally i planned to finish the body just with colourless wax, but after doing a few tests with various products, i thought the tru-oil brought the grain to life, and i love the grain in this bit of swamp ash. Plus, the black hardware and ebony goes much much better with it now than they did with the unfinished wood.

 

[DangerousR6]

Very very cool, the absence of any knobs or switches is a bit strange, but I like it....And that figure is just amazing... :icon_thumright:

 

[shanejw]

Great axe!!  Nice and clean!

 

[Death by Uberschall]

Very cool guitar.  :headbang:

 

[MedianMusic1]

Looks good. Why did you have 'a major concern about the body and neck not fitting together correctly?' The body and neck are both by Warmoth right?

 

[Cagey]

That's a fine piece of work! I like the minimalist style, and as has already been mentioned, that variax headstock looks good with that body style, too.

I can sympathize with getting rid of all the controls, but I think I'd still want a volume control for practical reasons. Or, maybe a miniature switch to just turn the pickup off or knock the output down to some lower level. But, somehow you need to be able to stifle the output when you're not playing. Constantly fiddling with the amp to set levels is liable to get old in a hurry.

 

[AutoBat]

volume pedal fixes all those woes.

 

[Cagey]

volume pedal fixes all those woes.

That's true. But, a 500K pot on the floor is the same as a 500K pot on the fiddle, so why not put it on the fiddle and be done with the mess?

 

[ibanezsicko]

Hi,

MedianMusic.
I was concerned about the neck not bolting onto the body correctly because my dad had an old Warmoth body and decided to refurbish it. Naturally, he thought a warmoth neck would fit right on without any problems, but the 4 pre drilled mounting holes in the new neck did not align with the pre drilled holes in the body. As a result, the neck sat about 3mm from the base of the pocket and i didn't want to have to plug and redrill any holes.

As for the volume control, i use a midi controller with a volume control running into an Axe-Fx. I've become very acustomed to using floor controls and don't miss the knobs on the guitar whatsoever. I can well understand why, maybe the majority of people, would still prefer the controls on the guitar though.

 

[Cagey]

As for the volume control, i use a midi controller with a volume control running into an Axe-Fx. I've become very acustomed to using floor controls and don't miss the knobs on the guitar whatsoever. I can well understand why, maybe the majority of people, would still prefer the controls on the guitar though.

Interesting. Hadn't thought of that. That opens up all sorts of possibilities.

One thing that occurs to me is that you could simplify one step further by getting rid of the cord as well. Since you don't have a cavity full of pots and switches, you could pull the guts out of a little wireless transmitter pack and mount them internal to the guitar. Put a little slide switch on the guitar in some unobtrusive place where nobody would see it so you could turn it on/off. How cool would that be? Pull out your guitar, and with no controls or cords, party down.