Latest Warmoth beauty!

Not quite finished yet (haven't installed the string retainer on the headstock or properly set it up) but there was a rare spell of sunshine today so I thought I'd take a couple of pictures:



Alder body, maple neck, pau ferro fb, string-thru-body Takeuchi bridge, very simple blend/vol/mode passive setup (mode is a rotary sw for series/parallel/split), with Fender Noiseless and Basslines SMB-5A pu's. As usual, Warmoth's craftmanship and finish quality are top notch, and check out that quilted maple top!

 

Thanks to you and the others for the compliments! It's actually my 9th Warmoth project (four basses and five gu*tars, so far), so it's getting easier, but there's more to it than many people think. For example you're not supposed to have to dress the frets. I've done it on all my projects and, although the majority had a better fret work than what comes out of many reputed factories and would have been ok to leave it as it was, there's been a couple where there were some high or low frets here and there so the fret dress was really necessary. Also, they will install and cut a nut for you, but then if you want to remove it for the fret dress you're likely to mess up the neck finish (which is done after the nut has been installed), which means that you should shape and cut it yourself and that takes some practice and patience. The electronics part is very easy for me but I've been building loudspeakers and other audio electronics stuff for almost 30 years.

So, if you haven't done this stuff before but just want to get into the hobby and maybe build yourself a backup bass, go fot it, have them install and cut the nut for you, forget about the fret dressing and then it's just a matter of drilling some pilot holes and doing the wiring, which, even if you've never touched a soldering iron before, is not so difficult if you go for a simple passive setup. You will be surprised at the quality of the instrument you've just built yourself, plus it's a great learning experience and there's nothing like that "I made it" feeling. You can always take it to a pro for a fret dress if it turns out better than you expected and want it to be more than just a backup.

OTOH if you want a custom bass that will be your #1 put together from very high quality woods at an incredible price and with exactly the options you want, order the parts and have a pro put it together for you. I don't have first hand experience myself but I hear there's a certain Mr Valenti out there who does a really good job using Warmoth parts...

To tell you the truth, I'm not crazy about it either, but, to cut a long story short, I wanted this bass to be a "clone" of my main bass, which has that layout because it was a Showcase body with the holes already drilled, so there.

I think so too! I think black would be too dark (the bass is actually darker than it looks in the pictures) and chrome would probably stand out more than gold, because that brown dye has a very warm hue. As for the sound, I don't know yet, without the string retainer the nut is rattling allover the place, but I already have an almost identical one, wood and pickup-wise (as I said above this was meant to be a clone) and I really love the tone. It has a perfect combination of warmth and clarity, for my taste anyway, plus the B string is surprisingly good for a 34" scale. The chunky neck probably has something to do with that.

I've only seen it sold by Warmoth, but it's very solid and well built and I like the string-thru or top quick loading option. I went for it because of that plus the 70 mm string spacing which I find a good compromise for my 80% fingerstyle 20% slap playing.

It's on my to do list though low priority and I'm in the middle of several guitar and loudspeaker projects, so it won't happen till the spring or so.