NPGBD - Warmoth Content

MikeS

Bengalsologist
New Project Guitar Body Day!

UPS came today with a new Warmoth swamp ash strat body. Universal route, side output jack, vintage tremolo. Body weighs in at 3lb 5.2oz, a bit lighter than I expected, but I'm not complaining. Many of these specs were based on the idea that I was a body short of a parts guitar due to the number of spare parts I had laying around. The original idea was to get an inexpensive body (something along the lines of a parted out Classic Vibe body). I mocked up this paint scheme on a whim, and the wife picked it out of the line up of possible options, and just like that a paint project was born.

The neck was purchased ~17 years ago when I needed a cheap neck for an older project. It's a MIM Standard strat neck that the previous owner did a bit of a relic job. It's still in fine condition, so it's going to get cleaned up and prepped for paint.

Bridge humbucker is a Brobucker, bridge is a Wilkinson VSVG, and I have enough spare parts to round out the hardware and electronics. I had intended to use only spare parts, but succumbed to a few moments of weakness along the way:
  • Fender Locking Tuners - I have a spare set of vintage style split shaft tuners, but ErikH had these for sale and I snatched them up.
  • Barrel String Retainers - An upgrade from the vintage style string retainer.
  • Pickups - I decided to bring a minihumbucker back into my stable, which turned into finding a sale on the Mojotone Johnny Winter firebird set. I'll admit it's an odd combination of pickups, but why not live a little?
  • Pickguard - I had to order a new pickguard for the new pickup configuration. A word of caution on these pickups... the Mojotone firebird pickups are a little larger than Duncan mini humbuckers, which are the largest mini humbucker rout Warmoth offers. I had to sand the routes a bit to get them to fit.
This will be my 5th guitar finishing project, but my first time attempting a burst finish. I have some testing/practicing to do before I start spraying the neck and body. I'm tempted to burst the back of the neck similar to some silverbursts if my tests go well. I'm sure I'll post some photos along the way. It will probably take me until the end of summer based on how little free time I get these days, but I have something to look forward to around the end of the summer.

 

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I got my neck a few weeks ago, and I am still waiting for the body to ship. I have all of the other parts sitting in a box on the shelf.
 
that should be a sweet setup. im a fan of the vsvg bridge and love the brobucker, the firebird pups should match up well and sound great!
 
Cool, now I´m really looking forward to updates on two new builds.

Good luck to both of you. I hope they go smoothly.
 
That'll be a sweet build. Never really thought about a Hum-Mini-Mini setup before. That should be interesting.
 
I've really liked firebird pickups in the neck every time I've tried them. I bet that will sound great!
 
swimming pool is the way to go!!

that body looks so good I'd be tempted to just oil it and keep it natural. But your color scheme on the mockup is killer - that's gonna look awesome when it's all done.
 
I agree, it's a nice grain pattern. I need to practice the burst on some scrap wood. If I don't feel like I can't pull off the burst then a transparent finish is definitely an option, but it would still be a bright color. If I can pull off the burst, there's even the possibility that the seafoam area could be a transparent finish with a burst to black, we'll just have to wait and see.

There is one small hole in the front that might bother me if this went transparent. In the photo with the pickguard, if you follow the bottom edge of the Brobucker to the left, near the edge of the body you'll see a dark spot. At the center of that spot is a small hole - a little under 1/16" in diameter and about 1/8" deep. It's easily fillable, but tinting filler to match grain is a skillset I don't have yet.

Be careful, your low E is trying to make a break for it.

I wondered if anyone was going to comment on that... that's where the low E intonated on the last guitar where that bridge was installed. I couldn't make sense of it. Aesthetically it really bugged me, sticking so far down if you squint it looks like a D-Tuna.
 
The last guitar that it was on had one of two issues, or both, with it that far back.... 1. badly cut not slots and not the right breaking point. 2. incorrectly placed bridge mounting holes. Once assembled and set up, double check the nut to make sure it is spot on and go from there. Heck, I've had certain string brands not able to intonate correctly on one of my guitars. It was the craziest thing. Same gauge and everything.
 
Maybe. This will be the body for the bridge. I found a picture of the 1st body this bridge was on and the low E saddle was pretty far back on that one, too. The A saddle was about halfway between the D and the low E. Maybe it was a guitar, maybe it was the strings, hopefully it's not an issue with the bridge. I'm a long way out from worrying about intonation on this project.

So here's one of the first challenges... I had planned to paint the back of the neck to match the body. It's an unbound neck and the side dot markers are 1/2 in the maple, 1/2 in the rosewood, and I had planned to mask the fretboard at this joint. There's no way I'm masking tiny semi-circles. So... are side marker stickers passé?​
 
I don't think it's worth the effort to paint the neck. If you really, really want the guitar to look like the mock-up then maybe paint just the face of the headstock.
 
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