patracles
Junior Member
- Messages
- 26
While waiting for my first Warmoth parts to show up I decided to take my first guitar and make it as nice as I could to be my son's first guitar.
(Build thread for new guitar using Warmoth parts is here) - https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=33185.0
This really helped me to build confidence with a lot of these skillsets so I figured it might be cool to share. The guitar is a $200 Samick that I thought looked cool when my parents took me to the music shop 20 years ago, and I love it. I learned to play on this thing. Going into the project I knew I wanted to use as much of the original equipment as possible, but improve wherever possible:
Factory heel pocket - woof.
Factory wiring (minus the 2-conductor)
Blocked the trem with oak shims that I shaped to fit
Leveled the heel pocket and filled gaps with wood-density epoxy
Using a method discovered on Youtube, straightened the neck with a heating pad (pardon the work surface)
Cut a one-ply pickguard to clean up the empty spaces
Added a push-pull pot to split the Gibson 498t...
...Which required converting the pickup into a four-conductor
Final product... the "SamSick" (it has six strings now thankfully so don't worry too much)
This thing now plays pretty much perfectly other than a couple nicks in the frets. It acoustically rings out and sustains much better, and the tone is pretty mean (498t is measuring out at 13.4k output/resistance). I also swapped to a GraphTech nut which isn't pictured but seemed like a no-brainer, as well as a new mono jack and push-back wiring.
(Build thread for new guitar using Warmoth parts is here) - https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=33185.0
This really helped me to build confidence with a lot of these skillsets so I figured it might be cool to share. The guitar is a $200 Samick that I thought looked cool when my parents took me to the music shop 20 years ago, and I love it. I learned to play on this thing. Going into the project I knew I wanted to use as much of the original equipment as possible, but improve wherever possible:
Factory heel pocket - woof.
Factory wiring (minus the 2-conductor)
Blocked the trem with oak shims that I shaped to fit
Leveled the heel pocket and filled gaps with wood-density epoxy
Using a method discovered on Youtube, straightened the neck with a heating pad (pardon the work surface)
Cut a one-ply pickguard to clean up the empty spaces
Added a push-pull pot to split the Gibson 498t...
...Which required converting the pickup into a four-conductor
Final product... the "SamSick" (it has six strings now thankfully so don't worry too much)
This thing now plays pretty much perfectly other than a couple nicks in the frets. It acoustically rings out and sustains much better, and the tone is pretty mean (498t is measuring out at 13.4k output/resistance). I also swapped to a GraphTech nut which isn't pictured but seemed like a no-brainer, as well as a new mono jack and push-back wiring.
