not diggin my warmoth tele

[marT]

hi all, long time no post.


I am just not digging my warmoth tele anymore. Its a decent guitar but not amazing. The biggest problem is it has dead spots all over the neck. True dead spots that are inherent in the guitar which sucks when playing clean. It also doesn't feel that great to play, the boat neck is maybe just a little too much and the body feels too light, I don't mind a reasonably heavy body, I like to feel like im playing something, not just air. I don't really like the compound radius either.

So my plan is to save the hardware but get a different body and neck. Call me crazy but I have been thinking about a mahog body with a maple neck w/rosewood board and P90's. Or maybe a P90 in the neck and hot tele bridge pickup. As you can tell I like gibson guitars but I also appreciate the tele sound.

What do you all think?

[MMP]

Sure, why not?
I know someone who is starting to wind old Fender Wide Range Humbuckers, like the ones in Tele Thinlines and such. Same size and fit. Or you might look for some used on the Bay.

[chuckocaster]

yo marT, you aint crazy man, sometimes things just don't fit together. it happens. best of luck on the new project.

[Kap'n]

I know someone who is starting to wind old Fender Wide Range Humbuckers, like the ones in Tele Thinlines and such. Same size and fit.

Really? With the CuNiFe magnets? Care to elaborate?

Any chance he'd make 'em in a regular humbucker size, too?

[Gris]

No, they are not CUNIFE. I think they are alnico, but I can't swear. But the guy went to great lengths to cop the real WRHB sound, so they should be the closest thing out there.

[NeoFauve]

yo marT, you aint crazy man, sometimes things just don't fit together. it happens.

Like my attempt to mate a Gibby mini-HB with a Fender CS Jerry Donahue bridge p'up.
They sound cool alone, but installed together, they just... unequivocally don't.


I feel your frustration and malaise, marT.

[Don]

I still love my USACG T-Style to death! I built it 5 years ago!

The body is 2-piece light ash, the neck is 1-piece maple, soft V shaped, a bit smaller than Warmoth and USACG's boat neck and has a 9.5" radius with what USACG calls 6105 frets (.095" wide x .055" tall)

It might be the USACG parts, the Fralin pickups, dumb luck or a combination of a lot of things, but it's an awesome guitar.

I highly recommend checking out USACG.

I'd like to build a mahogany solid body guitar with P-90s or Humbuckers.

[Don]

Sometimes I forget that I didn't like my T-Style at first! It really took the right amp (tweed Deluxe clone) to get me there. Once that happened my enjoyment with it trickled down to my other amps.

It always felt right and never had dead spots though.

Have you tried heavier tuners or temporarily putting a clamp on the headstock to deal with the dead spots?

[marT]

Thanks guys.

Yeah I have tried all the tricks and it doesn't seem to help.

I tune it to Eb which helps in the sense that the dead spots are sent to areas that I play a little less but they are still there, just on a different fret.

[marT]

What helped spark this as well is a friend gave me his squire tele to fix the jack that keeps screwing up and honestly it feels like a better guitar than my warmoth. Better acoustic tone. The electronics and pickups suck though.

Just goes to show though even the cheapest of guitars can be a winner.

[Don]

A good guitar is a good guitar. A bad one is a waste of time.

[frank thomson]

What helped spark this as well is a friend gave me his squire tele to fix the jack that keeps screwing up and honestly it feels like a better guitar than my warmoth. Better acoustic tone. The electronics and pickups suck though.

Just goes to show though even the cheapest of guitars can be a winner.

why not just buy a complete guitar that you like and JUST change the hdwe?

what am i missing?

[Don]

I assembled my Tele clone because I wanted something that suited my wants and needs more closely than what Fender offered, for the joy of assembling something myself and lastly, to save a few bucks.

MarT was probably hoping for the same thing.

[frank thomson]

oh yea, you're prob right....BUT...mail order parts are a crapshoot, and you'll never know if one 'wood' will cancel-out the other 'wood'

i've had fenders do the same thing.

my example is my RC strat (coincidentally, it was a mail order purchase!...lol). It was tone dead w/ the factory neck, then i installed a 57 US ri neck and it sings.


not saying it cant happen w/ fender, but you greatly eliminate many dogs by playing/trying out many guitars

...just like dood said, the $169 Squire played/felt MUCH better than his ($600-$1100??) custom assembled guitar.

[marT]

You are right frank and I have been thinking that maybe buying second hand might be the way to go. There are a lot of good shops around here that sell nice second hand guitars. I might find something really well priced and warn in.

I have never had a 2nd hand guitar but I have been thinking lately it might be better than new and probably cheaper.

The reason for wanting to build etc was mainly to get something a little different and for the fun of it. But like you said it IS a big crapshoot and I can't really afford to keep trying different things.

[LookerBob]

Interesting to see this... I remember a clip of you playing this tele through a metro JTM45 and being extremely impressed... so much so that I bought my own Warmoth tele.

I actually stopped by the forum to admit that after 9 months of playing it, my Warmoth tele deluxe has put my R8 in its case... it just gets better all the time. We have been playing in D (not dropped, but the entire guitar down to D), and w/ 11s it really just 'works' with this guitar, while being a bit floppy w/ the Les Paul. I absolutely *love* the boat profile as well.

I don't have dead spots, and the tone is full and warm, but with a bit more brightness and edge to it that helps it cut better.

I want another one, but this time I want to get it finished in nitro.

Sorry yours isn't cutting it... if you still have it, have you had anyone try doing a proper setup on it?

[curt1lp]

Hi MartT,

Thats a bummer, thinking about it and without seeing the guitar - things to try. ? bone nut, tusq nut ? check the neck pocket. If the wood is not mating well - I usually make sure by smoothing the neck heel slightly with fine sandpaper attached to a perfectly flat piece of wood (make sure you don't cause any rounding of the heel though) and/or scraping out the neck pocket if needed to get rid of paint wood particles etc. (I use a window scraper with a sharp blade for that). Other option in Oz is Cash Converters - I've bought number of nice guitars there.

Don

[Direstraits]

Could you not just buy a new neck? might work out cheaper?
as far as p/ups go, I have a custom made guitar which is hollowed out like a thinline 'Tele in which I've fitted a Seymour Duncan Broadcaster in the bridge & a Kent Armstrong HPAN1 in the neck - the HB is coil tapped and I get a pretty good variety of 'Tele tones out of that combination.

[Offshore Angler]

Drop the strings a half tone, loosen the neck bolts untill the neck creaks and retighten. Retune and try it now. Have the frets been leveled? I mean before we throw out the neck let's make sure it had a chance.