To the Window Shoppers...

QuasarQuail

Junior Member
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I rode the fence for about a year before pulling the trigger on a Warmoth.

I always thought Jazzmasters looked the coolest. Tom Verlaine, Willie Nelson in the 60s, Sonic Youth…I wanted one, too. However, having been a Gibson player for many years, I didn’t love the necks.

A few years ago, I inherited a custom guitar that had been sitting in my friend’s garage for a decade or two. Warped neck, frets popping out…bad news. But it contained a great quality humbucker and a nice set of tuners. When I found out about Warmoth, I checked out the possibility of using the parts from the trashed custom to make a Jazz with a neck built to Gibson specs, or at least as close as I could get. My concept was to build a meat n’ potatoes US-made guitar that wouldn’t make me gasp every time it knocked into the wall or something. No paint job, just raw pieces that I’d finish with Tru-oil and assemble myself.

Well, my birthday rolled around and I got a little extra scratch, so I went for it. A month later, the parts arrived. Right away, I could tell the neck was a killer. I opted for the compound radius. Chunky with big frets, no sharp ends whatsoever. Over the course of two days, I applied a total of four coats of Tru-oil. On Day 3, I started by drilling holes for the pickguard. This went almost without a hitch, until I accidentally broke a drill bit off into the body - bummer, but oh well, this guitar was never intended to be a showpiece. I bolted on the neck, installed the bridge (I opted for the US Strat bridge, and fortunately they drill the rake holes for you), then wired up the single pickup and single volume knob. Finally, I strung it up with my usual 10s, and…it was stiff as a board.

My criteria for a guitar is that it's got to be easy to do the sorta dissonant licks from Chuck Berry’s “Maybeline,” as well as that trick where you bend the third string to sound like a steel guitar. Trying to do those things on this guitar was killing my fingers. I adjusted the intonation, got the string height to my liking…and it was still tough to pull off the boingy riffs that were so easy on my SG. After doing some reading, I decided to try some 9s instead. Hey, it worked for Don Rich. Apparently, the longer scale of a Fender makes those riffs a little tougher when using heavier strings. Well, the 9s did the job, and after a few hours of playing, all my old tricks started to feel comfortable. Plus, the twangier sound of the lighter strings on this kind of guitar put a new coat of paint on my default guitar moves. Meanwhile, jangly chords were much easier to play and rang much truer than they do on my SG. In all, I’m glad I took a chance on Warmoth. This is good quality stuff. And for better or worse, this gee-tar is one of a kind.

In closing:
* Expect your new guitar to feel a little different than your points of reference. Seems obvious, but a Fender neck built to Gibson specs will not feel like a Les Paul. Excellent, but different.

* Take your time and don’t break drill bits off in the body. Wait until you’re done drilling to start drinking.

* Expect to need a little professional help if you demand perfection the second your guitar is operational. For instance, on mine, the open b string sounds like a sitar unless it’s secured in the string tree. The open e string sounds sitar-y if it’s in the tree. Go figure. At the moment, it doesn’t bother me enough to pay for a refinement.

* Don’t be intimidated by the assembly. I am no technician, but I do own a drill and about $30 in tools from Harbor Freight, and except for that broken drill bit, this really was not difficult.

* If you’re on a budget, but need a great guitar and don’t mind something that looks sorta homemade, seriously consider this before settling for a guitar built in some hellhole in China. Of course, if you have your heart set on an elegantly lacquered heirloom, Warmoth can help you with that, too.
 
QuasarQuail said:
Wait until you’re done drilling to start drinking.

Wait... what?  :laughing7:

Nice post, and welcome to the board.

A lotta folks try to put lightning in a bottle. Never works. Even if you travel to the local monster-sized supplier with $2M in guitars hanging on the wall or carefully hidden away for just the right customer, you can play 15 of the same model from the same manufacturer from the same year with the same options, and they'll all be different. It's less of an issue these days than it used to be because no serious manufacturer is trying to get away with not owning a CNC machine, but it's still there because wood isn't consistent and electronics have tolerances.
 
Also, if you buy tools made in some hellhole in china (horror fright), expect drill bits to break in wood  :-\
 
xsspeed said:
Also, if you buy tools made in some hellhole in china (horror fright), expect drill bits to break in wood  :-\

Well... that may not be the best dividing line.

Cheap, low-carbon steel bits that you can get 98-piece sets of for $29.95 or so aren't worth the price of shipping, but they generally dull up or bend before they'll break. At the same time, some really high-priced carbide or cobalt bits made here can snap just by looking at the damn things the wrong way. It sorta has to do with how they're used.

Cheap bits will dull so fast it's comical. They're no bargain. A drill index for less than $100 or so is almost guaranteed to piss you off in no time even if all you drill is wood. They just stop biting and become useless, so you try to force them. Of course, the steel has no understanding of your anger/frustration or any sense of self-survival, so it just goes bye-bye.

Expensive, super-hard bits, on the other hand, are very brittle. So, they wanna snap. They don't give at all. Even vibration will kill them. I learned this the hard way last year on a project. Spent about $40 drilling 6 holes. There's two cases of beer I'll never drink.

Most of the time, though, what happens with reasonable quality cutters is simply side pressure. Try drilling with a hand-held drill, and it's very easy to change the angle of the pressure you're applying, and POOF! There goes your bit.
 
yea the key to drill is to go slow and not use much pressure.  You can get decent bits from Enco and a Drill Doctor is worth the money too.
 
It's never a good idea, either, to do the common (newishbie) mistake of trying to enlarge a hole bit-by-bit-by-bit. You want to jump at least... two or three drill sizes at a time. If you've got reason to trust yourself*, you can go from a 1/16" pilot right to your 5/16" or 1/4" or whatever. Which means you want to get the straight up-and-down thing working - soon. You can hold the drill with the bit resting in it's awl-or-nail-marked indentation. Is it straight up and down? Then physically get your head to view it at a 90 degree opposition. Is it still straight? And back.... and back... get that stuff out of the way before you pull yon trigger! :eek: If the drill is straight and staying that way, guess what happens when you turn it on?

You can drill stuff like string-through body bridge holes with a hand drill. Really, really straight. But it is not a function of the expense of your tools, neither is it improved by a really great, winning, kickass, attitude. Woo! WOO! No. NOO! It's a learned skill, with a few learned tricks thrown in.

*(It's a learned skill, with a few learned tricks thrown in. )
 
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