Hello all! I'm really stoked to have found this board, and have very much enjoyed looking around at all you folks' stunningly beautiful instruments. :icon_biggrin:
So, after years of kicking around the idea of building my dream guitar, I finally took the plunge. I'd priced custom fabrication from shops that would deliver a finished product, but I figured, "Where's the fun in that?"
I had my eye on a body in Warmoth's showcase... when I came across it, my heart nearly stopped, as it was pretty much what I would've designed for myself:
Chambered construction, swamp ash body with FREAKING GORGEOUS quilted maple top. The pictures really don't do it justice. Natural masked binding is the icing on the cake. The only thing I would've changed is the tremolo routing... never had much use for one myself, but it was already routed and having the same body custom-built instead of in the showcase would've been $$$ more just for a hard tail. I'm probably just going to block it off in the end.
My very first guitar was a Squier Strat that had a flamed maple neck on it that had NO business being on a Squier. I've never seen another neck that matched that level of flame.... until this neck. I did have this one custom-made, not from the showcase.
The pictures REALLY don't do the flame justice at all. The grain is darn near holographic...
Now, the one thing I expected to be done by the factory that wasn't was drilling the tuning key studs. I opted for the Schallers that Fender uses on the American Deluxe series, which have two studs underneath the tuning key to prevent turning in the hole. I've seen a jig that StewMac sells, and a great friend of mine lives about 100 miles away that did pro carpentry for years and has a drill press I can travel to use. Still up in the air on that one; suggestions appreciated. :dontknow:
Speaking of drilling holes, the controls are a bit unconventional.
Magnetic pickups are Lindy Fralin Woodstocks, with a bass plate installed on the bridge pickup. The bridge is an LR Baggs X-Bridge, which has piezo pickups in it for an acoustic sound. Now, I would NEVER use that for a recorded acoustic sound, but for live applications, not having to deal with feedback is such a bonus. Plugged in at stage volume, most of the nuance and warmth of my Taylor is lost anyway, and the LR Baggs bridge I've used before and provides a pretty good crispness that cuts through the live mix and still sounds "acoustic." Output jack is to be stereo, to run the magnetics to the Egnator and the bridge to a POD XT Live for reverb and a little compression and out to the PA. I'm pretty excited to hear what they sound like simultaneously...
The magnetic pickup controls are run by a board I got from Awesome-Guitars.com:
http://awesome-guitars.com/1-products-02.htm
(They shuffle the product page IDs around every now and again, but currently this leads to their 3-coil assembly. Sorry if it doesn't work in the future.)
Six switches; the first three control on-off, and the second three control series-parallel relationships. The site has a full chart of the combinations, but the idea is the on-offs can go either up or down; if you have the first two both up, the neck and middle pickups are in phase. If one is up and one is down, they are out of phase. Middle is off. For the second set of switches, if the switch is up, it's parallel; down, in series. No middle on these. On my Squier from years ago I put in toggle switches to control the pickups and it worked for me live, so I'm not so worried about getting crossed up live switching pickups. I'm going to have to drill the holes for the pickup switch set, so off to my friend's drill press! They were helpful enough to include a drill template, so yay for them.
The one big question I do have for the community is about shielding... so, these are single-coil pickups going into a nice, loud tube amp. The body is rear-routed, so the standard pickguard shielding won't apply in this case. I know I'm going to have to make sure there's no continuity between the bass plate on the bridge pickup and the shielding, else the various switching options will yield, shall we say, interesting results. Non-conductive tape and a bit of glue on the mounting screws should take care of this for me. Anyone ever done much shielding with this style of routing? Did you adhere the standard copper plating to the pickup cavities? How much did it show through? If it did show through, did it bother you? Was it a huge PITA? :dontknow:
Anyway, I know this was long, and I hope all of you out there are shredding, plucking, strumming, and rocking out every chance you get.
:rock-on:
J
So, after years of kicking around the idea of building my dream guitar, I finally took the plunge. I'd priced custom fabrication from shops that would deliver a finished product, but I figured, "Where's the fun in that?"
I had my eye on a body in Warmoth's showcase... when I came across it, my heart nearly stopped, as it was pretty much what I would've designed for myself:
Chambered construction, swamp ash body with FREAKING GORGEOUS quilted maple top. The pictures really don't do it justice. Natural masked binding is the icing on the cake. The only thing I would've changed is the tremolo routing... never had much use for one myself, but it was already routed and having the same body custom-built instead of in the showcase would've been $$$ more just for a hard tail. I'm probably just going to block it off in the end.
My very first guitar was a Squier Strat that had a flamed maple neck on it that had NO business being on a Squier. I've never seen another neck that matched that level of flame.... until this neck. I did have this one custom-made, not from the showcase.
The pictures REALLY don't do the flame justice at all. The grain is darn near holographic...
Now, the one thing I expected to be done by the factory that wasn't was drilling the tuning key studs. I opted for the Schallers that Fender uses on the American Deluxe series, which have two studs underneath the tuning key to prevent turning in the hole. I've seen a jig that StewMac sells, and a great friend of mine lives about 100 miles away that did pro carpentry for years and has a drill press I can travel to use. Still up in the air on that one; suggestions appreciated. :dontknow:
Speaking of drilling holes, the controls are a bit unconventional.
Magnetic pickups are Lindy Fralin Woodstocks, with a bass plate installed on the bridge pickup. The bridge is an LR Baggs X-Bridge, which has piezo pickups in it for an acoustic sound. Now, I would NEVER use that for a recorded acoustic sound, but for live applications, not having to deal with feedback is such a bonus. Plugged in at stage volume, most of the nuance and warmth of my Taylor is lost anyway, and the LR Baggs bridge I've used before and provides a pretty good crispness that cuts through the live mix and still sounds "acoustic." Output jack is to be stereo, to run the magnetics to the Egnator and the bridge to a POD XT Live for reverb and a little compression and out to the PA. I'm pretty excited to hear what they sound like simultaneously...
The magnetic pickup controls are run by a board I got from Awesome-Guitars.com:
http://awesome-guitars.com/1-products-02.htm
(They shuffle the product page IDs around every now and again, but currently this leads to their 3-coil assembly. Sorry if it doesn't work in the future.)
Six switches; the first three control on-off, and the second three control series-parallel relationships. The site has a full chart of the combinations, but the idea is the on-offs can go either up or down; if you have the first two both up, the neck and middle pickups are in phase. If one is up and one is down, they are out of phase. Middle is off. For the second set of switches, if the switch is up, it's parallel; down, in series. No middle on these. On my Squier from years ago I put in toggle switches to control the pickups and it worked for me live, so I'm not so worried about getting crossed up live switching pickups. I'm going to have to drill the holes for the pickup switch set, so off to my friend's drill press! They were helpful enough to include a drill template, so yay for them.
The one big question I do have for the community is about shielding... so, these are single-coil pickups going into a nice, loud tube amp. The body is rear-routed, so the standard pickguard shielding won't apply in this case. I know I'm going to have to make sure there's no continuity between the bass plate on the bridge pickup and the shielding, else the various switching options will yield, shall we say, interesting results. Non-conductive tape and a bit of glue on the mounting screws should take care of this for me. Anyone ever done much shielding with this style of routing? Did you adhere the standard copper plating to the pickup cavities? How much did it show through? If it did show through, did it bother you? Was it a huge PITA? :dontknow:
Anyway, I know this was long, and I hope all of you out there are shredding, plucking, strumming, and rocking out every chance you get.
:rock-on:
J
