My First Post... Partscaster roulette and Light weight bodies...

[Sonnyblu42]

Hello all,  It's great to join this community. So many beautiful guitars built here and information to absorb. I have great appreciation for Warmoth and their very accessible and easy to navigate and understand website, which helps promote them well above their competition. I look forward to my first Warmoth build.

My first parts experience was a very good one... In approximately 1991 I purchased a finished Strat body from Stew Mac. It would have been right when they first started selling them. What an incredible sounding body... I used it to replace my 1979 Fender Antigua body that weighed a ton.
This is my second best sounding guitar next to my PRS DGT.
I have tried to find out just what these first Stew Mac bodies where, but they can't tell me.

Then I tried my first complete build... a Musikraft light weight Swamp Ash Strat Body and Maple SRV Rosewood Neck... They don't work together at all... It is weak, no volume, no voice... The parts fit very nice and snug... I think the neck is beautiful... But it just doesn't work.
So I am scared to ever try a lightweight body ever again... I'm using a Wilkinson Vintage Tremolo.
Maybe it's not heavy enough... I have a Jimmie Vaughan that is a little heavier, going to try it.
So I'm not sold on this whole lightweight body thing... Is it all about having a heavy bridge?

What I want to build from Warmoth... A solid Mahogany Tele with Mahogany neck, rosewood or ebony fingerboard... a LP Jr/Tele but not with P90's.  Cherry Wine Stain, Open Grain, Tru Oil finish perhaps.
I play my PRS DGT like a Tele... Coil taps on 75% of the time... I want something I can use similar to the PRS DGT... I can not afford the $$$$ for the VIP Mahogany... unless it's Showcased!

Also... What happened to all the other body styles that were here before? Namely... Les Paul DC and L5S?  Will they still cut them? My fav guitar I have seen here is the October 2009 LP DC.

 

[Sonnyblu42]

I just saw the "Gibson Styled Products" notice...

 

[Day-mun]

Hello fellow n00b, I just joined the forum a couple of days ago. -We can hang out here in the corner and look nervous together until one of the big kids come over and welcome us into the fold.

Don't give up on great tone coming from a light-weight body; Warmoth has hooked me up with a few real keepers (unfortunately, I didn't keep them all... don't know whatcha got 'til it is gone.) that were great sounding, -when I put the right combination of parts together. My first Warmoth build was so over the top; a strat with SD hot rails in every slot and a baritone conversion neck lol! that body was way happier when it got some single coils and a naked goncalo neck (25.5" scale... the one that got away, btw, -had to pay the divorce lawyer somehow).

There are tons of threads on the whole Gibson vs. Warmoth thing, check it out and you'll be up to speed in no time.

Hope to see some pics of your current projects, -which reminds me, I'd better get on the stick and start doing some image posting as well.

 

[alterbridgefan]

Welcome! :toothy12:

 

[Sonnyblu42]

Thanks guy's...

The coffee and cookies are good over here in the corner... ;-)

Yeah, when I build this project I'm thinkin' DiMarzio Area's Teles... or a Lace Sensor Gold Strat neck and maybe see what Lace has got for a Tele Bridge...

I want it to be hot... But, not so hot that it won't spank... It's got to Spank!

Yeah, I have seen some beautiful Mahogany Tele's on here... I can't wait to try!

 

[Cagey]

Welcome to the forum!

I wouldn't worry about the weight thing too much. I put together a chambered Mahogany Tele last year with an Afra/Afra neck...

...and it turned out to be a flyweight at 6.1 pounds. But, the thing is just raucous loud and ballsy, with surprising sustain. People pick it up and strum a chord and the first they say is "damn!" because it's so unusually loud. I'm talking acoustically here, now, not plugged in. It isn't because it's chambered, because I have another one similar to this one that's actually hollow, and it's nowhere near as loud.

Plug it in, and it's just as happy. That Roadhouse pickup at the bridge and the TrueCoil at the neck are wonderful parts.

What's also unusual is that bridge (solid brass w/ Graphtech saddles), and of course you don't see Afra necks on your typical Tele.

 

[Sonnyblu42]

Thank you Cagey... That is a beautiful Tele!
That is very reassuring to know... I'm still gonna go solid though... LOL

I know my 79 neck with this Stew Mac body is the same way.
It has it's own natural reverb, it has great volume, tone and voice... It's Swamp Ash...

I wonder though... With all of you experience builders here,
What the percentage of successful tried body to necks is.
Is it is all just blind luck? That can be a very expensive game of chance.
You can't tell until the bridge is mounted and the strings are on.

I wonder on average... what the number of misfit bodies sitting in closets is.
Like misfit toys... at the "Land of Misfit Toys" LOL

 

[DavyDave53]

I've heard it said that you can judge a wood's resonance and tonality by holding an active tuning fork to it.  I've never tried this.  Does this actually work or is it false?

 

[bagman67]

A common refrain on this board is that there is a tremendous amount of received wisdom, snake-oil, ideology and/or woowoo that has no proof (defined as evidence built up through repeated, controlled experimentation and analyzed logically).


So anyone who tells you "yes' or "no" on that one is probably either selling something, or testifying in the religious sense of the word.


Note that the sound of the wood vibrating sympathetically is not what's getting picked up by the pickups - it's the disturbance of the magnetic field by the vibration of the strings themselves.  A more resonant body is more resonant because it actually absorbs some of the energy of the string vibrating - so a  more resonant body may well impede sustain.  On the other hand - not much scientific proof has been adduced on that front, either.


So smoke what you want, and if it gets you high, well, then, it's the right stuff.

 

[bagman67]

I realize I hit the "rant" button and thus didn't quite answer your question.  If you strike a tuning fork and press the handle against the body, yes, you'll get some sympathetic vibration, and some bodies will amplify the tuning fork fundamental more than others.  That's just plain physics happening. 


Whether that turns out to be a good thing for solid electric guitar body is the part that trespasses on the realm of "maybe, maybe not."


Happy hunting.


Bagman

 

[Sonnyblu42]

Yes, I have been reading some articles about the fact that... The tone woods just don't really make that much difference! I don't really want to believe this... but it may be true.
A Tele is gonna sound like a Tele whether is made out of Ash, Alder or Mahogany... PU's may make more of a difference.

I still have to try an all Mahogany no matter what... I have to believe that it is going to be a LP Jr/ Tele...  Now, I'm not one that's big on any kind of faith and or b@llsh$t dogma...
But, This is one I still got to believe in... 'cause I want to! LOL

 

[stubhead]

There's a sort of fundamental division between warm'n'woody and hard and metallic. It's not like a war or anything, but the twin poles of tone. Of course the woody sound is pleasant, because we evolved to respond favorably to sounds most like human voice. And that sound might be very pleasing too you, as you sit in your bedroom - but that same exact sound will turn into incoherent mush if you tried it a five-piece band. There is an ongoing dilemma the young'uns experience when trying to form a band, or even just jam - one entire generation has been Pavlotized* into thinking that the highest level of achievement is "cutting through the mix." And when the bass player is cutting through the mix, and the rhythm guitarist is cutting through the mix and the keyboard player is cutting through the mix - WHO'S PLAYING THE GODDAM MIX?  :evil4: :evil4: :evil4:

But I digress. I'm really sure that a mahogany-bodied Telecaster can sound fantastic - once you know how to play it. Perhaps the most famous of them is the "tele-Gib" that wily Seymour Duncan made, and traded it to Jeff Beck - for the beat-to-crap old Esquire that Beck had used in the Yardbirds. And as wily Seymour was walking out the door, Beck realized he had just given away a piece of his history... but he made fairly good use of it, like goosing Eric Clapton here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZBeerUD-zc

And on a little song called "Cause We Ended as Lovers".  :hello2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dRlaIjLqro

 

[Cagey]

The tone woods just don't really make that much difference! I don't really want to believe this... but it may be true.

The whole concept of "tone woods" comes from the acoustic guitar realm, where everything about the guitar's sound comes from how the wood vibrates (or doesn't, as the case may be). So, Cedar will sound different from Spruce or Mahogany, which both sound different from Maple or Limba, or various combinations/thickness of more than one wood. How dense the wood is, how brittle, how compressible, etc. will all change how the wood responds to external influence, such as a vibrating spring.

With an electric, most of those considerations are moot. A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse. It is as Bagman says - your pickups are sensing the fluctuations in a magnetic field caused by vibrations of the strings, not vibrations in the body. So, unless you've got some magnetic wood, the pickups aren't going to "hear" the body vibrate.

What will happen is the body/neck woods will absorb some frequencies, which speeds up the decay of the string vibrations. The more "resonant" the wood is or the thinner the neck, the worse it gets. Since the wood is affecting the string vibrations, the pickups will sense that.

 

[DavyDave53]

"And yet it moves." Galileo

Are we missing a factor here?  The string moves, the body moves AND the pickup moves. 

Some even believe that pickups mounted directly into the body of an electric guitar sound better.

Has anyone compared the sound waves of a mounted pickup and a pickup that is isolated from the body vibrations?

 

[Day-mun]

I never really thought about it too much, but I guess that most of my favorite guitars have been those with pickups suspended from screws through a pickguard, -typically find them to sound better... then again, maybe I just have a soft spot for strats. -And I don't think I am getting hung up on SC's vs HB's here; tele's with wood-mounted neck pickups look cleaner, but the ones with p/g mounted coils have been the ones I keep gravitating to.

...then again tone is such a subtle and elusive thing. -Who knows if there is a difference that can be heard by the human ear?

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Stubby, I think the Tele-Gib is good ol' swamp ash.

 

[Sonnyblu42]

I'm digging these replies guy's!  Thanks...

Yes, It really is all about how the string ends up vibrating...
Is it achieving that "Piano attack and volume" I guess that's what I want to hear... Bwang!

But, the very same model of guitar can vary... even with the same hardware... so there must be a resonance properties coming from the body, that allow the hardware (bridge, nut, pickups) to work.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

It's more likely the neck than the body.

 

[stubhead]

I have a couple of opinions, just based on being old, and having played a lot, and assembled many, and thought about it.

1) I believe that the relative balance of components matters. There have been some great-sounding "hippie sandwich" guitars made of purpleheart and cocobolo and maple with heavy brass bridges and oversized pegheads and heavy everything. And livewire 18v active electronics with dummy pickups and onboard effects...

And there have been some great-sounding lightweight swamp ash guitars with single trussrods and creepy little low-powered pickups and bent-metal bridgeplates. BUT: putting pound-and-a-half brass bridges on a flyweight body doesn't work well, and not too many people are going to put a "vintage" style bridge on a 12 pound purpleheart body... the weight and intent of the parts of a guitar work best if they're at least somewhat unified. To a certain extent, using a component that tends towards "sustainy" may compensate for another component with less sustain, but only to a small degree before the design goes out of whack. I have absolutely no evidence for this, and asking a bridge saddle what it's "intent" is may seem goofy, but...

2) "Great tone" is what most people want - and that means average tone. Not too distorted, not too bassy, not too trebly, most people are most pleased when they sound as much like everybody else as possible. Up into the seventies somewhere, musicians, especially jazz musicians, were often concerned with finding their own signature sound, even to the point of removing or adding things to their style that "sounded bad." I'm thinking of Coltrane and Miles Davis, intentionally playing with no vibrato - nowadays you couldn't get hired or graduate from Berklee or NTSU or U of Miami if you couldn't assay the "correct" styles of the times. This runs deep, because if you do make a willful choice to sound "different", by now you're going to have to do something pretty obnoxious and annoying.

3) Scooped mids are a really bad idea. If you're playing in a band where the midrange is getting cluttered, tell everybody else to get their ass out of your frequency or fire them - midrange is where electric guitars sound good. Maybe there's too many people in your band. This matters because if you're playing a basswood guitar with a Floyd Rose through a Triple Rectifier or 5150 (6505, whatever), you're playing a rig that is essentially designed to please singers and bass players by turning your own tone into raspy static. Ick.