Death by Uberschall
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You can buy a top wood somewhere else and send it to Warmoth. :icon_thumright:
Death by Uberschall said:You can buy a top wood somewhere else and send it to Warmoth. :icon_thumright:
My understanding is that they will use your top, but there is no discount off the normal base price of you guitar. Meaning that if you send in a flame maple top, you will still get charged the base price for a flame maple top, just your wood gets used. This is because they still have to mill, plane and glue it all together.BigBeard said:Death by Uberschall said:You can buy a top wood somewhere else and send it to Warmoth. :icon_thumright:
You can? Huh, that's news to me...... I thought they really frowned on sending in your own wood.....
Wyliee said:It's still going to be full pop for customer supplied wood. Invariably, the piece has to be prepared (planed, dried, cut down, etc...) before it can be used. Setting up equipment to do that for one piece is actually more expensive per piece than batch processing. FYI, those extra steps also adds time to the production process.
Honestly, most of the wood I've seen sent in hasn't been that impressive. I can understand pieces that may have sentimenal value, but it most cases Warmoth's stock is pretty darn nice.
BigBeard said:Now keep in mind there is no extra labor involved on their end for the honor of picking out your board, no more labor than a lam top you didn't pick out. Smart money is on letting them decide........ once the costs of materials comes into play. Now that I did this math problem, my mind is made up, no more Warmoth's for me.......
Tonar8353 said:It was worth it for me because I had a specific guitar that I wanted to duplicate and this piece of wood nailed the look and in fact exceeds it. That said get ready to pull your wallet out, but think what it would cost to have the same guitar built by the Gibson or Fender custom shop.
AutoBat said:The power to be able to choose is always better than not having the option.
Wyliee said:BigBeard said:Now keep in mind there is no extra labor involved on their end for the honor of picking out your board, no more labor than a lam top you didn't pick out. Smart money is on letting them decide........ once the costs of materials comes into play. Now that I did this math problem, my mind is made up, no more Warmoth's for me.......
BB, this is quite wrong. Photographing and cataloging all the pieces is an additional labor cost. Any order with a unique choice piece gets special handling to make darn sure the correct piece is used. These are additional services to the customer. How many other custom builders allow you to pick the exact piece used for your build? Check their prices and I think you'll find Warmoth to be quite the bargain.
In all seriousness, if you can find significant sources of maple at $6-8 a board/ft and yield AAA - AAAAA pieces of figured maple from it, you might want to consider starting a small business. High grade figured maple, particularly quilt maple, is in short supply. You may find your yield far less than what you might expect, though. Also expect to pay more to have a mill/vendor resaw your lumber unless you have the equipment to do it yourself.
BigBeard said:I wish I did have a source for figured maple..... We have Silver maple here in PA, which does come up with nice flames sometimes, but it's a shot in the dark when you are out playing lumberjack I know. I mean how do you tell what trees have figured grains until you make them lumber?
I think JackThe Hack said it best "yes".lafromla1 said:I was playing around with the body builder and while looking at specific tops, especially on the Rosewood tops, the price can increase as much as $300, shooting a $400 body to over $700.
Would you pay the added cost of a specific top or buy it and hope for the best (assuming that there isn't one you want in the showcase)?
Super Turbo Deluxe Custom said:On the PRS video posted a while back, he had a theory postulated to him by a logger. That is, a tree with figure has struggled to maturity under a taller tree starving for light. When that taller, older tree finally dies, the figured tree - now no longer light deprived - grows at a differeing rate than before, causing the burling, figuring, and flaming. The logger said that they will look for trees growing around an old mound that the previous bigger tree's root ball had displaced. That yields good results. So yes, it is an abnormality and not genetic so a tree with figure will not have figured offspring in ideal growing conditions.