Finish up assembly & setup :: Warmoth Stratocaster SSS [7.3 lbs]

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Here's one of two Warmoth Strats a customer brought in for assembly.  Check out the unfinished roasted maple neck!  This one was partially assembled with the pickguard (wired up with Bill Lawrence L280 / L290 pickups) and locking tuners pre-installed.  I mounted the output jack, double checked the wiring and set up the guitar with D'Addario XL 10s.  I also had to swap out the saddle set screws for longer ones to account for a high neck angle.  The original set screws were only a thread or two away from maxing out.  I could have adjusted the neck angle but the shim would have been on the visible end of the neckpocket.

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New bridge & pots :: Warmoth Strat [8.0 lbs]

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This Warmoth Strat is approximately 30 years old and was tough to play.  The player and I found out that the bridge was vintage spaced and pushed the strings far too close to the edge of the fingerboard.  The solution was to swap it out for a new Callaham V/N bridge.  The "V" stands for vintage mount (6 screws) and the "N" is for narrow spacing.  Wow, what a difference in both playability and sustain.  (note the outer 2 bridge mounting screws were omitted as there must have been a 2 point bridge at some time with two large post holes in the body - we may opt to plug thesein the future).  We also replaced the pots as the old ones were pretty rough.  I used an Emerson Custom 500KA pot for the volume and went with Bourns pots for the tones.  I initially had Emersons in for the tones too but found the sweep far too subtle for most of the pot's travel for this guitar (around 2-3 they began to roll off rather quickly).  The Bill Lawrence bridge pickup's plastic mounting tabs were stripped out so they were plugged and re-tapped.

The pot swap was featured over on the vlog (video below).