My first Warmoth Strat

[BrotherJack]

Got the bug to build guitars a few guitars ago.  This is a pic of my first Warmoth (neck) build.    It's since gone, and I'm stated on the next one, but I thought I'd throw a pic of it up here as a way of saying "howdy ya'll".    Warmoth neck and custom pickguard, 18:1 tuners off of a G&L, Lace Sensor Hot Gold's, and I re-did the controls as a 1-switch-per-pickup affair, with a single volume and single tone, and located them elsewhere than where my pick hand flails about.    Everything else is just normal parts that don't deserve special mention. 

Whatcha think - did I do OK for my first ever Strat build?

EDIT: ewwww.. not liking how the pic comes out attached, so editing post to put it embedded inline below.

 

[MikeW]

Welcome Jack. That's a nice start to the addiction that is Warmoth. I like the pickguard on that especially. Well done classic Strat.

 

[Alfang]

MikeW beat me to it, nice build LOVE the pick guard choice, it really pops

 

[bagman67]

She's a beauty!

 

[DocNrock]

Very nice, dude!  The pickguard goes great with that color scheme.  :icon_thumright:

 

[BigSteve22]

Welcome Jack.

Very nice. I was actually thinking of replacing the pickguard on my son's black Squire strat with a black pearl. I Like the look.

 

[BrotherJack]

Thanks for all the kind words, guys!  Though that pickguard is not the black pearl, it's the silver pearl.  The black perl just didn't have enough 'pop' I didn't think, and on a black body, there was too many black color tones in the black perl (at least, such was my opinion).    At the end of the day  I decided that this thing was freaking gorgeous, but didn't really represent me as an artist (I'm more hick/hilbilly, and this is more rhythm and blues looking).    I also concluded that Lace Sensor's are the best single coil pickups ever (soooo smooth and warm!) - but... I also conclude that I don't really like single coil pickups as much as I thought I was going to (previously, I've always been a humbucker guy, a couple guitars back I had one with a single coil in the neck, and that was nice, so I thought I wanted to convert), so this one got sold off (also didn't hurt that sale helped fund additional building efforts, LOL).

My next one is going to be a lot darker in color, all black, with a white outlined pickguard, and chrome hardware.  It'll be a semi-sorta like the Jim Root stratocasters with the blackout pickups, 5 way switch located where tone knob(s) usually are, except mine will probably have no knobs at all.  It will be dual humbuckers, and positions 1-3 the usual bridge, bridge+neck, neck setup.  Position 4 will be "off" and position 5 will be a coil tapped neck pickup (I have never figured out why I would ever want the sound of a single coil in a bridge pickup, but they do some really nice things in the neck slot).    Oh, and a custom 3x3 headstock that will probably be ever so vaguely in the neighborhood of a PRS, on a roasted maple 24 3/4 Warmoth neck with no inlays at all (just side dots).    Should be pretty cool (and probably still not 'hick' enough for me, but that'll be a great excuse to sell it and build another one, LOL!)

Just waiting on Warmoth to finish making the neck and pickguard and ship it to me, and I'll be ready to git er dun.  I'll throw pics of it up when it's finished.

Note: I presume that because this is the Warmoth forum, that pics of my non-warmoth builds are not kosher, or no?

Thanks,
Jack

 

[BigSteve22]

I stand corrected: Silver Pearl. Still think it's a great look! Glad I didn't order Black Pearl yet, Thanks.

The description of your next build sounds interesting. (Especially since I would not have thought that a "hick" would even know who Jim Root was!) Can't wait to see the pictures.

 

[BrotherJack]

LOL - I don't know that I do know who Jim Root is, but I've seen pics of guitars with his name on em, and mostly they look pretty good-ish to me.  The main reason I'm doing this one, is because I have a black strat body just sitting here with nothing to do.  My end game, is probably going to see the new neck (The roasted maple one) or one much like it, put on a hand-built body I'm doing out of a red fir tree that used to stand in my front yard.  I've done a couple of guitars out of red fir to practice on, but am not quite ready to take the tools to the yard-tree wood. 

But in the meantime, I need a quality guitar that I like to gig with, and at the moment my closeset contender is a $30 Ibanez I bought for scrap and rebuilt into a playing guitar (and don't get me wrong, it's not a totally awful to play axe, but it was a $120 guitar when it was new, and it's long since not new).

[me=BrotherJack]rambles .. and rambles.. and rambles... [/me]

 

[BigSteve22]

I like the way you think, brother. When you do decide to take on that tree in the front yard, by sure to let me see the pix. That's gonna be a true "hick" experience!

As for that Ibanez, I never look down my nose at a player, no matter what it costs. My favorite electric for many years was a '64 Hagstrom HII, that I paid $115 for used, around 1971. It's been played, taken apart, rewired, refinished, converted to humbuckers, and for a goodly amount of time, just generally abused. I plays great and I still have it after more than 40 years.

Ramble on!

 

[BrotherJack]

BigSteve22 - true enough on the 'player guitar'.  I would probably be a lot friendlier with it if it wasn't purple (or some hair-band looking variation thereof), and I wasn't a country/americana playing kind of guy.  It actually plays very nicely (Wizard II neck; very sweet), and I have some BelCat Alnico V pickups in it, which were fairly cheap (sub $20 per pickup), but actually do sound remarkably good; far better than 98% of factory stock pups I've ever played (easily on par with Duncan Design or Pickups By Lace, or other 'designed in US, built in china' pups).  But it just looks like something a big hair band from the 80's with a penchant for bright colors and lipstick would play -- not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's you thing, but the things is, it's not my thing, LOL.      But it was $30, and plays nice, so how could I not buy it? 

After some random reading on other topics, I think I am going to take some Krylon Rust Tough matte black to it, and see if I can't make it at least look a little more Johnny Cash and a little less Poison meets Motley Crue. 

 

[BigSteve22]

Wow! Purple, $20 pups, super thin neck. Who would own something like that? Both of us, I guess!

http://www.guitar-list.com/hagstrom/hagstrom-h-ii-f-200/619618

Check out this link to pix of my Hagstrom right after it was refinished, look familiar? Not exactly '80s hair band, but definitely mid '60s mod.

 

[BrotherJack]

Yeah, see, now that guitar you linked there in purple looks classic and classy.  Mine just looks like someone should be banging out  some old Poison or Ratt tunes on it. 

 

[BigSteve22]

Thanks for the kind words. After those were taken, I added a pair of black plastic pickup covers to cover up those cream bobbins.

I don't think my parts dealer in Sweden liked the conversion, he didn't answer my e-mails for a month after sending him the pictures! (Hagstrom purist.............)

Good luck with the flat black, I like understated.

 

[Patchel]

Well Done !