Baritone Project

[idsnowdog]

My baritone project is nearing completion. The neck is a warmoth 28in conversion, wilkinson self-locking tuners, northern hard ash body, warmoth triple hum pickguard, two mighty mite motherbuckers and a kent armstrong M215 in the neck. The bridge and middle have on/off toggles, while the neck has a series/off/parallel toggle and a 500K volume control. I will probably change to a 1meg volume. I think I will install a varitone switch, rather than a tone control. Each of these pickups are 20K resistance and are very powerful, smooth and aggressive sounding. The sound is hateful and venomous! The motherbuckers have really surprised me, they are great quality for only $20 a pickup! The M215's and the motherbuckers are a good match.

The strings are Ernie Ball 72 -14 and I had to use a dremel to widen the string holes. I also had to widen the tremolo plate holes slightly to make string changes easier. The strings are stiff and the action is fairly high, but it is not uncomfortable to play. Surprisingly this guitar was easy to intonate and I don't get any warble while playing chords. The nut was also dead on at the 1st fret, which surprised me. I need to adjust the trussrod and tweak the action, although notes past the 14th fret tend to fret out.

[Lazarus1140]

Re: Baritone Project

Nice ..... and what is it tuned down to?

[idsnowdog]

Re: Baritone Project

Nice ..... and what is it tuned down to?

It's tuned to B. I adjusted the action and it's a lot better now. I put some foam under the springs because they resonated too much.

[SabbathFan0220]

Re: Baritone Project

Awesome. I've been wanting to build myself a Warmoth baritone Tele for a while now.

[TeleLubber]

Re: Baritone Project

Nice! You are gonna have fun with that..

I love my baritone strat.. I used the Warmoth conversion neck too.. I needed to get longer intonation screws for my hartail bridge tho.. and I went thru several sets of strings, tunings, and setups trying to get the action "right"..

I suspect it supposed to be a little higher than a standard guitar, but lower than a bass.. and it seems I've found that with some tweaking with the truss rod, shimming, and using D'Addario XL157 baritone set strings (.014 thru .068) tuned B to B .. when I used "standard" heavy strings (.012s) with an unwound G string, say tuned to C# .. I would get those warbles you mentioned..

I originally used humbuckers.. but wasn't completely happy with the lack of clarity I heard, esp. with chords.. and I'm not satisfied with using the single coils either.. so my next step is to try a set of Lollar HB sized P90s..

I'm curious as to why you're using such high output pickups.. and let me know if it works for you! Anyway, here's my project..

[Kam]

Re: Baritone Project

Very cool, man.

[idsnowdog]

Re: Baritone Project

I'm curious as to why you're using such high output pickups.. and let me know if it works for you! Anyway, here's my project..

I wasn't looking for a lot of versatility in this guitar, so I decided on powerful pickups. I don't play a lot of different styles and I wanted something to do downtuned music like COC, Bolt Thrower and Candlemass.

I had used this body before and northern hard ash is very bright, clear and resonant sounding. These qualities are what I thought would work well in a Baritone guitar. I have played 7 strings made from softwoods like alder, swamp ash, basswood and they sound like ass! One criticism I have with a lot of downtuned bands is they use softbodied instruments and their sound lacks punch and clarity. I already knew a maple neck and a northern ash body were going to sound bright, clear and resonant so I chose pickups based on that tone.

The Motherbuckers work great in this guitar and they are a fantastic value. The Motherbuckers are somewhere between a Dirty Fingers and a Invader soundwise. They aren't as wild, loose and fuzzy as a Dirty Fingers and they aren't as dark or round as Invaders. They are big and fuzzy like a Dimarzio Super Distortion but they are much louder, fuller and tighter sounding. The Motherbuckers also have a fairly balanced tonality and aren't dark or mushy. The reason I went with them is because low output pickups often have muddy/loose bass response and I wanted a big, tight bass to go with a bright resonant body.

[TeleLubber]

Re: Baritone Project

I wasn't looking for a lot of versatility in this guitar, so I decided on powerful pickups. I don't play a lot of different styles and I wanted something to do downtuned music like COC, Bolt Thrower and Candlemass.

I had used this body before and northern hard ash is very bright, clear and resonant sounding. These qualities are what I thought would work well in a Baritone guitar. I have played 7 strings made from softwoods like alder, swamp ash, basswood and they sound like ass! One criticism I have with a lot of downtuned bands is they use softbodied instruments and their sound lacks punch and clarity. I already knew a maple neck and a northern ash body were going to sound bright, clear and resonant so I chose pickups based on that tone..

Well that makes sense.. I never really considered the body wood as the problem with the clarity I was describing before.. though that's an obvious thing to consider.. LOL.. doh!

I originally had this on my MIJ Strat body when my band covered Korn tunes in drop A tunings, but didn't really want it coupled anymore with a floating tremelo.. and then decided to put it on this Squier body with a hardtail bridge, which I had handy.. which is probably plywood.. hmm.. dumb mistake me-thinks..

So now.. you got me thinking, I should try this on a tele body I have made of Northern Ash/Walnut Cap.. it's pretty bright currently even with the rosewood fingerboard I have on the current neck, but not harsh/spiky.. and I bet this neck will really have some mojo on that body.. just may be the ticket.

Thanks for the info on the Motherbuckers.. I can see rockin some COC on this.. I had this thing set up to play in drop C tuning at one time, and it just nailed that stoner rock tone.. haha..

I'm looking to use mine more for alternate tunings.. and recording textural things.. or who knows what.. not really doing the doom and gloom metal/grunge thing anymore.. but who knows eh?

[TheLivingDead]

Re: Baritone Project

Awesome! Both strats in this thread are win.