Monochromatic Tiger's Eye Quilt - Canary neck - Original Floyd Rose

crimethink

Junior Member
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When Fender guitars dream at night it is guitars like this that get them moist under the pickguard...


Body - Warmoth Strat :: Tiger's Eye quilted maple over mahogany with natural drop top binding - $495
Neck - Warmoth Pro Srat :: 1 3/4" raw Canary with OFR R5 nut - $270 (after OFR nut prep)
Bridge - Original Floyd Rose, gold - $200
Pups - (3) Bill & Becky Lawrence a.k.a. Wilde USA L-45S twin blades (Link) - $146.50 (after shipping)
Electronics & screws - all Warmoth +/- $130
About $1,300 total... all USA and all custom for about the price of a basic non-sweat shop Fender...


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I just love the natural drop top binding with the clear gloss mahogany back! It looks so elegant and really ties in the raw Canary neck as far as repeating the color around the guitar.
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F'n power lines and fence, man... I was going for the "Hard Rock Cafe" sign type photo :)
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Not even this fancy camera and the warm Texas sun can do the colors of Canary any justice. This Canary is HARD..... no, no.... I mean HARD!!! I looked it up and people use it for heavy construction, railroad ties, ship building, etc.
Get one if you get a chance and, if you like a stress-free build, use a drill press for the 1/16" tuner pilot holes because using a hand drill with such a small bit on this hard of a wood made me sweat like a whore in church. Drilling was slow-going and had I to do it over again, for MY NERVES, I'm using a drill press because *I* have broken a 1/16" bit on pine more than once. I drilled it OK but it was the LEAST fun of the entire build.
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The Wilde USA (Bill & Becky Lawrence) L-45 pups are incredible. Bright, hot and the most amazing pup for clean tones I've ever had. VERY sensitive for finger picking or opening the gates of Hell all dirtied up.
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See how nicely the Gold OFR goes with the Tiger's Eye finish? What a bonus for me that this OFR doesn't say "original" below "Floyd Rose" like the new ones!!!
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Having just gotten around to setting up the intonation on the OFR I have to say this is my favorite guitar now. I have always considered myself a "Les Paul man" but with the addition of this Warmoth Strat I'm thinking that my Gibson Custom Art & Historic '57 "Black Beauty" LP Custom will be spending more time hanging on the wall than hanging on me. I've never been a fan of Strats, bolt-on necks or single coil pups because of the Fenders I've played but this Warmoth is a whole other animal.


I have to say that the Warmoth experience which includes the quality of the product as well as their customer service is second to none. Any time in the future that I'm in the market for something they manufacture there is no more "buying off the rack" for me with regards to settling for whatever limited options I have with a mass produced axe from a big box store or mom & pop dealer. To paraphrase the old adage, "Once you go custom....."
 
I dig it! Well done! Agreed that it's one of the nicest I have seen here. The canary will will get more awesome with age...
 
That thing looks awesome, man. Good job!
Why'd you choose a strat when you thought you were a paul man?
 
Great concept and realization.  The only thing I'd change would be a 1 11/16" width, but that's just because I have small hands. 

Fantastic build!  :icon_thumright:
 
Thanks for the compliments yall!

Max said:
That thing looks awesome, man. Good job!
Why'd you choose a strat when you thought you were a paul man?

I still adore the LPs and always will but this time around I was looking for a little sound diversity. It took my "purist" friend Paul from San Francisco to give me the nudge to not put a humbucker in the bridge because this body was routed for it and I was VERY tempted. I wanted the Strat tones that you can only get with a 3-S Strat and a 5-way switch but it took my friend reminding me of the all-humbucker collection I have to "do it right".  I like the warm, thick 'n' chunky sound hence my penchant for mahogany and humbuckers... even this Strat is mahogany so that may never change and until I found the Canary neck I was thinking about doing an all- Rosewood neck but went with the Canary to be a little bit brighter and ALMOST ordered a 24 3/4" Gibson scale conversion neck.... meaning I kept trying to build a Les Paul sounding axe that looked like a Strat.

I did a sound comparison the other night by detuning the Strat to Dimebag tuning and played some classic Pantera on the Strat followed by playing the same on my Dime'd out Dean MLF and with that much gain the difference is nominal... on the other hand I played them both cleaned up and the difference was astounding... not just each tone per position but the variety of tones the Strat can do as opposed to the Dean and the LP. I am completely in love with the neck and neck-middle tones of this Strat which only encourages the blues phase I'm going through... frankly, I like the Strat sound better than my LP Custom in this department as the '57 buckers that came with my '57 are a little too muddy. My next guitar could very well be the new LP Standard Gibson now has offered with an OFR bridge so the LP love affair isn't over... just slightly chilled.  :icon_smile:

Another thing about this Strat I love is how comfortable it is to sling it - not just because it is unbelievably light being chambered but the forearm, tummy and heel contours along with how I slightly off-centered the strap lock on the horn towards my body it is so much more comfortable than the LP or the Dean. The LP is just heavy and the Dean ML body is just huge while playing the Strat standing, walking or seated is, well, effortless.

DocNrock said:
Great concept and realization.  The only thing I'd change would be a 1 11/16" width, but that's just because I have small hands. 

Fantastic build!   :icon_thumright:
Thanks! I copied and pasted pictures of a few bodies and a few necks from the Showcase to see how they went together visually and I had the Canary, Padouk, Rosewood and Pau Ferro raw necks as my choices. I had a few gorgeous bodies other than this one in the power point slides I made trying to decide what to buy but I set my "body budget" at $500 and I was willing to chill and sit on my cash until something happened... which ended up being this body marked down from $599 to $495 and the Canary just stood out visually (meaning NOT actually standing out visually) and being bright without being too bright and warm without being too warm as Canary is about in the middle tone-wise of the raw necks I was considering. The wife and I are HGTV and DIY Network fans - she watches all weekend long and I watch long enough to get an idea and then go to Lowe's for supplies so if I happened to learn the rules of color from designers like David Bromstad while paying attention to the carpenters then that would be why the color scheme is as appealing as it is. With the warm colors of brown and amber in the body and neck it would have been a tragedy to mix in a cool color/finish like chrome on this guitar so I went with gold. I really wanted chrome hardware but I bought the wrong body to use chrome IMHO. Maybe next time I'll pick parts based on chrome hardware.

I TOTALLY feel you on the 1 3/4" nut because all I have are 1 11/16" necks but I LOVE the extra 1/16" and, honestly, the difference is pretty insignificant. The next Warmoth build I do will have to have the 1 3/4" nut because I really like it now that I'm playing one. My hands aren't the biggest either but, for me, there was more of an adjustment laterally with regards to muscle memory being used to playing the 24 3/4" Gibson scale necks and now having a 25.5" Strat neck than the itty bitty more surface area on the vertical or width. 1/16" is about the size of a .50 gauge string +/- and that extra width is really not that noticeable.... even doing the thumb-over-the-top fingering like Jimi and SRV are known to do it's not much different feeling than my other guitars.
 
crimethink said:
It took my "purist" friend Paul from San Francisco to give me the nudge to not put a humbucker in the bridge because this body was routed for it and I was VERY tempted.
Wait.. Paul told you not to make it more like a Paul?

THIS. IS. IRONY!
 
That is just crazy awesome....One of THE best strat's I've seen on here...That neck look fanfreakin' tastic with it too... :icon_thumright:

And I didn't realize crimethink you're in Texas... :hello2:
 
beautiful guitar!  :kewlpics:


Canary's great isn't it? Just put one on my black strat.

-erik
 
Awesome-looking guitar! The flame and the neck are gorgeous. And finally, something that could make me like gold hardware!

"Pimp," however, is not an adjective. :laughing7:
 
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