vernschrock
Junior Member
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- 141
This is going to be long, I apologize in advance.
I was going to wait until the parts showed up. Since I'm posting more than I thought I would, I figured I should maybe put this out there. So maybe I look like I belong here, and not just somebody spouting a bunch of nonsense. I certainly wouldn't want to be the guy that, say; bought a screamin' deal neck, 5 or 10 years ago, did a wee bit of work on it, not enough to screw it up, took a pic or two with a tuner on it, tossed the neck into a corner and never put it on a guitar, spent the remainder of my time talking junk and "giving advice", etc, etc...
This is my first Warmoth, but not exactly my first rodeo. I've built a few guitars and necks from scratch, by hand. I was quite a bit younger then with much better eyesight, while working in cabinet shops and building one-of-a-kind handmade furniture at the time. I think my skills are still pretty decent at 54. I've worked on every single factory guitar I've ever owned. I can't say I have ever liked every facet of any guitar from nose to tail. It usually involved picking one that sucked the least, and the things I didn't care for could easily be "fixed". Not only that, but I got tired of buying guitars where the actual materials and workmanship of the guitar itself was worse than the cardboard box it came in! It's also difficult finding an electric with a decent nut width. I really hate narrow necks, jumbo frets, and when the outer strings are so close to the edge of the fretboard there’s always the risk of yanking the high E right off of it!!! That's how I showed up at the Warmoth website.
So, with that out of the way. Let's begin.
I ordered back in March. A Vortex unfinished neck, and a Velocity finished body (both custom). I'm thinking they should show up in June or July. I wish it were sooner, of course.
Not that anybody will likely care, but these are a few reasons for my choices:
-I actually like the look of the Warmoth headstock better, because of the staggered tuners. But the Vortex headstock has more meat on the end, and I use a clip-on tuner. It always helps to have more space to clip on to. I like to think of it as being practical!!!
-I chose the woods based partly on the "characteristics" displayed in Aaron's videos. I realize this is a contentious subject that usually devolves into arguments culminating in roughly one group saying, "This is what I hear, so go f@(% yourself!", and the other group saying something along the lines of, "Not only do I not hear any differences, neither do YOU!". So let's just say my choices were driven only by the PRETTY COLORS, and leave it at that. If you fall into the second group, you're going to love the part where I talk about how I plan to wire up the two switches with a single P90!!!
-Why rosewood shaft with a kingwood fretboard??? Easy, kingwood is in the true rosewood family. It’s gorgeous and feels great. Name one other place that would even give me this option, without paying for a $10,000 custom handmade guitar.
-I went with the Velocity body, because it kinda looks like an LP and a Tele had a baby, and the Ty Tabor Signature from Guilford Guitars is the uncle. I think I read somewhere that it's sort of based on the EVH stuff, but I really don't see it. Maybe I'm wrong about the EVH part.
-Single P90 in the bridge position. I like the sound of neck pickups for certain things, but I always end up bashing into them with my pick. So rather than doing something silly like improving my technique, I plan to get different "pickup tones" with my switching. I'm not much of a tone knob twiddler, so I wanted the benefits of twiddling while getting repeatable tone values every single time.
-The switching will consist of one of two options:
One volume pot, which is a given.
Option 1 - 3-way Blade Switch wired to give different flavors to the pickup. Basically used as a single pole switch. Each position is followed by a cap (of a particular value) mated to a resistor (particular value). This works like a tone pot set at a certain position with a knob that can't be moved. The second hole will have an on/off treble bleed switch.
Option 2 - In order to go even further out there! A single pole 8(or 10)-position Rotary switch, essentially doing the same cap/resistor combo as described above. Just more tones. If I go this route, the treble bleed switch will move to where the blade switch is (a carved piece of kingwood will be used as a cover for the blade switch holes). It will either be really cool, or really stupid!!!
--I rigged up a homemade test bench that will be used to determine the desirable cap/resistor values using alligator-clip test leads, etc. I already know that all of this works. I used one of my other guitars as a test mule.--
The specs:
Vortex Neck
Tiltback Gibson® Scale Conversion
Indian Rosewood Shaft
Kingwood Fretboard
1-3/4" (44mm) Nut Width
59 Roundback Profile
10" - 16" Compound Radius
22 Fret
SS6105 Frets
Schaller Locking Tuners (Black)
White Pearloid Trapezoid Inlay
GraphTech Black TUSQ XL Nut
Standard 4-Bolt
Unfinished
Velocity Guitar Body
Chambered Construction
Roasted Swamp Ash Core
Quilt Maple Lam Top
Rear Rout Control Cavity
P90 Bridge Pickup
Schaller 475 Bridge (Black)
Strat Pocket Shape
Forearm and Tummy Cut Contours
Amber Dye Top Color
Transparent Amber (Burst-over) Back Color
Gloss Finish
QiJack
Stringjoy Strings (Custom Set)
Here are the Visualizer screenshots:
I was going to wait until the parts showed up. Since I'm posting more than I thought I would, I figured I should maybe put this out there. So maybe I look like I belong here, and not just somebody spouting a bunch of nonsense. I certainly wouldn't want to be the guy that, say; bought a screamin' deal neck, 5 or 10 years ago, did a wee bit of work on it, not enough to screw it up, took a pic or two with a tuner on it, tossed the neck into a corner and never put it on a guitar, spent the remainder of my time talking junk and "giving advice", etc, etc...
This is my first Warmoth, but not exactly my first rodeo. I've built a few guitars and necks from scratch, by hand. I was quite a bit younger then with much better eyesight, while working in cabinet shops and building one-of-a-kind handmade furniture at the time. I think my skills are still pretty decent at 54. I've worked on every single factory guitar I've ever owned. I can't say I have ever liked every facet of any guitar from nose to tail. It usually involved picking one that sucked the least, and the things I didn't care for could easily be "fixed". Not only that, but I got tired of buying guitars where the actual materials and workmanship of the guitar itself was worse than the cardboard box it came in! It's also difficult finding an electric with a decent nut width. I really hate narrow necks, jumbo frets, and when the outer strings are so close to the edge of the fretboard there’s always the risk of yanking the high E right off of it!!! That's how I showed up at the Warmoth website.
So, with that out of the way. Let's begin.
I ordered back in March. A Vortex unfinished neck, and a Velocity finished body (both custom). I'm thinking they should show up in June or July. I wish it were sooner, of course.
Not that anybody will likely care, but these are a few reasons for my choices:
-I actually like the look of the Warmoth headstock better, because of the staggered tuners. But the Vortex headstock has more meat on the end, and I use a clip-on tuner. It always helps to have more space to clip on to. I like to think of it as being practical!!!
-I chose the woods based partly on the "characteristics" displayed in Aaron's videos. I realize this is a contentious subject that usually devolves into arguments culminating in roughly one group saying, "This is what I hear, so go f@(% yourself!", and the other group saying something along the lines of, "Not only do I not hear any differences, neither do YOU!". So let's just say my choices were driven only by the PRETTY COLORS, and leave it at that. If you fall into the second group, you're going to love the part where I talk about how I plan to wire up the two switches with a single P90!!!
-Why rosewood shaft with a kingwood fretboard??? Easy, kingwood is in the true rosewood family. It’s gorgeous and feels great. Name one other place that would even give me this option, without paying for a $10,000 custom handmade guitar.
-I went with the Velocity body, because it kinda looks like an LP and a Tele had a baby, and the Ty Tabor Signature from Guilford Guitars is the uncle. I think I read somewhere that it's sort of based on the EVH stuff, but I really don't see it. Maybe I'm wrong about the EVH part.
-Single P90 in the bridge position. I like the sound of neck pickups for certain things, but I always end up bashing into them with my pick. So rather than doing something silly like improving my technique, I plan to get different "pickup tones" with my switching. I'm not much of a tone knob twiddler, so I wanted the benefits of twiddling while getting repeatable tone values every single time.
-The switching will consist of one of two options:
One volume pot, which is a given.
Option 1 - 3-way Blade Switch wired to give different flavors to the pickup. Basically used as a single pole switch. Each position is followed by a cap (of a particular value) mated to a resistor (particular value). This works like a tone pot set at a certain position with a knob that can't be moved. The second hole will have an on/off treble bleed switch.
Option 2 - In order to go even further out there! A single pole 8(or 10)-position Rotary switch, essentially doing the same cap/resistor combo as described above. Just more tones. If I go this route, the treble bleed switch will move to where the blade switch is (a carved piece of kingwood will be used as a cover for the blade switch holes). It will either be really cool, or really stupid!!!
--I rigged up a homemade test bench that will be used to determine the desirable cap/resistor values using alligator-clip test leads, etc. I already know that all of this works. I used one of my other guitars as a test mule.--
The specs:
Vortex Neck
Tiltback Gibson® Scale Conversion
Indian Rosewood Shaft
Kingwood Fretboard
1-3/4" (44mm) Nut Width
59 Roundback Profile
10" - 16" Compound Radius
22 Fret
SS6105 Frets
Schaller Locking Tuners (Black)
White Pearloid Trapezoid Inlay
GraphTech Black TUSQ XL Nut
Standard 4-Bolt
Unfinished
Velocity Guitar Body
Chambered Construction
Roasted Swamp Ash Core
Quilt Maple Lam Top
Rear Rout Control Cavity
P90 Bridge Pickup
Schaller 475 Bridge (Black)
Strat Pocket Shape
Forearm and Tummy Cut Contours
Amber Dye Top Color
Transparent Amber (Burst-over) Back Color
Gloss Finish
QiJack
Stringjoy Strings (Custom Set)
Here are the Visualizer screenshots:
Last edited:
I certainly will.
) in a cross-hatch pattern to rough up the fretboard to reduce some of the friction without having it look like absolute crap.
