anybody here ever built a guitar

[shovelmanblues]

i'm thinking of selling my epiphone les paul and building a warmoth tele deluxe.
any thoughs on that people:smiling s

[ldelo]

Warmoth makes great necks.

I see (on harmony-central) that they sold a couple bad necks back in 2004, and (according to the rants there) they wouldn't give the customers any satisfaction. Bad move on their part. To be fair, most the rants are obviously posted by the same sour grape who kept cutting and pasting their own rant into different review submissions, with minor edits. Makes me suspicious of the poster, not Warmoth.

However and again, I clearly like Warmoth stuff, the one neck of theirs I have has remained straight and true for around ten years, without ever needing so much as a tweak of the truss rod.

To be honest though, a body is a body and assuming the woods are what they're claimed to be, the rest is pretty much eye candy. I'm not talking about hackish routing jobs or voids or a body with defects or whatever, if any of those are present then the body is bad. But beyond that and (again) assuming the body is made of the proper wood and etc...

Had StewMac or others had a Strat body like I wanted, I would've bought one. For what I paid for my unfinished, fresh-off-the-CNC-table-and-not-finished-sanded-or-drilled-slash-whatever swamp ash Warmoth body ($175 delivered to my house), I could've bought an already finished and ready-to-rock body somewhere else.

On the other hand, all those other bodies come pre-finished and ergo pre-routed and drilled (most of which has to be done before the finish), and that means one is stuck with their choice of options.

That's why I bought a Warmoth body in the end, I wanted Gotoh/Wilk. trem routing, and it's just not offered except in custom bodies.

You might watch Warmoth's store (in stock, ready-to-be-sold stuff), you might find a good deal on something you like. I notice that except for the ultra-boutique class of stuff, their pre-made, in-stock items tend to be priced lower than the same thing custom-ordered....

[ldelo]

BTW, Strats and Teles and their clones/knock-offs are bolt together affairs, so in general it's not real hard to put one together. If you buy a new neck from someone like Warmoth, it'll likely need fret dressing and perhaps some truss rod tweaks, and that's more of a luthier thing...

There are however a gazillion options such as pickup routings, bridge routings, where to put the jack, front or back routed, etc etc. Be sure you know what you want in the end and order the proper routings up front.

I'm not that familiar with Tele bodies, but with my new Strat body (for example) I ordered SSH pup routing. The pups actually mount to the pg, so I can use that body for either SSS or SSH. But if I'd bought a SSS routing, I'd have to take a chisel to the body to fit a bridge bucker to it later.

YMMV... I've found that going through all the endless options and etc is half the fun... well, all the fun so far because outside of getting the raw body and starting to investigate stain colors, that's all I've done...

[Old Tele man]

...I've built a few: (1) one using my own design and Carvin neck and pickup; (2) one using my own design using Danelectro neck & hardware; and, (3) a Warmoth Tele.

[ldelo]

Cool! How'd you like the Warmoth Tele? And which neck did you get... Vintage, Vintage Modern, or Warmoth Pro? Did it have the compound radius, and if so, did you like?

[Old Tele man]

...neck was "stock" C-shape with 7.25" radius...other than "sharp" fret edges needing "filing down" all was fine.

[shovelmanblues]

I'm wanting a pretty staight foward tele deluxe, i figure for the price of one of the new mexican reissues i can build one with my choose of color and pickups

[shovelmanblues]

oh and what sucks is 12 years ago i could have bought a original '74 in a local pawn shop for 250 but at the time i was a teenager with no job. a frind of mins parents bought it for him but he made them mad sometime later and the sold it.

[ake]

I have built a few 6stgs and basses, using scrounged parts from guitar stores, stu-mac, Mighty mite, Warmoth, all parts and Saga.

Be sure to check out Fat Dog in Berkeley for parts too.
Victor Litz, sometimes has some unbelievable deals on parts, bodies and necks.

Playing a guitar that you have built yourself is a FINE experience.

[WireNWood]

...i figure for the price of one of the new mexican reissues i can build one with my choose of color and pickups


Maybe.

Usually, not really.

I've built plenty. It always seems to work out that by the time it is something you're not ashamed to own up to, it cost about the same or a little more than a finished off-the-shelf item.

If it was cheaper to buy the parts, then nobody would make any money parting out guitars. When I decide a Strat or Tele has to go, I get lots more money selling it piecemeal.

When the end product is in your hands, saving money is among the least satisfying motivators for the BYO axe plan. The most successful reasons to BYO are custom tayloring and pride in saying "I made this". It sounds like the custom tayloring is high on your list. You must place great value in the personalization aspect of the project. If not, experience suggests that you will find little satisfaction.

I'm known for taking cheapass guitars and making them into something better. I do not pretend to be saving any money doing this - it's just something that gets me off. My guitar projects cost money, but I look at it differently. I've put maybe $100 and many hours of work into Obeycaster1, for example. That hundred bucks has already bought me several of hours of contented entertainment.

In dollars per hour my hobby is probably the same or less costly than golfing, drinking, hunting, boating, bowling, going to the movies, or gambling - and I have a tangible artifact for my efforts. More hours of pleasure are expected as I actually get around to playing the fool thing.

It is cool to know you built it yourself, but the coolest thing IMO is when someone who doesn't know it is a BYO plays it and likes it/loves it/gets jealous/offers you $. That alone is a payoff - like warmfuzzy money in my emotional bank.