Full assembly & setup :: Warmoth Stratocaster HH [7.1 lbs]

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The second of two Warmoth Strat's in for assembly.  This one also has a roasted maple neck (though with an ebony fingerboard) but was routed for no pickguard and humbuckers (Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II).  The guitar needed the electronics to be installed and wired up.  A request of the player was to thin down the bridge's plastic humbucker mounting ring to lower it's profile.  The Sperzel locking tuners required the blind pins to be drilled before installation.  Similar to the player's other Warmoth Strat, the saddle set screws were swapped out to account for a higher neck angle.

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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).

"Fender" Strat [7.8 lbs] :: late-night quick setup

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"Fender" Strat [7.8 lbs] :: late-night quick setup.

A player stopped in last night as he recently noticed that his Strat was beginning to fret out with big bends on the upper frets.  I removed the neck, tightened the truss rod, and raised the saddles back up to the original action.  This helped clean up the sustain in his bends.

I love being able to support gigging players.

Note this is a Chandler Industries body and a Warmoth neck.  I didn't have time to pull the pick guard and check the pickups.