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Well, these ain't new. 
OK, one of them is. I've been meaning to do this for a while, I figured I'd wait until I had them both together. Both are 10-16 compound radius necks with 1-11/16ths nut width, and both are Alpine White, but that's about all they have in common.
First up we have a very 80's style single-hum, Alpine White, Alder Warmoth Strat body with a contoured heel, and a Black Korina neck.
To finish it off, a set of Gotoh tuners, Original Floyd Rose, CTS solid shaft 500K pot and a Duncan Custom TB5 in the bridge.
Another view of the neck... Note the rear-mount R3 Floyd nut (like I said, 80's style) and of course, the Gotoh's:
Bridge shot: This is what Warmoth calls a "flush mount" Floyd. This is exactly how I remember Kramers being in the 80's. Note there is not much room between the base plate and the body. It is set up dive-only but you could get a LITTLE pull-up without shimming the neck.
Now, also, I shim the bridge so the outer saddles are raised, which makes the saddle radius about 20". I like this on a Warmoth. I no longer do this to a 12-16 because it doesn't make enough difference to be worth the trouble. But, on the Warmoth, I like it.
6100-size fret wire. This is Warmoth "61GD" fret wire. Not quite as hard as stainless, but much harder than nickle. I think this is frets 2-4. I do NOT have a light touch, and the guitar has been played heavily for about 3 months... there is zero fret wear.
So, that one has been done for a while. Still needs to have the frets leveled but it's not bad at all, so I'll get around to it one of these weekends.
In the meantime, with that project a success, I decide to order something a little more off-beat...
You notice how you can't find a decent hard-tail Fender Strat? The Billy Corgan with the crap nitro over poly and the CBS boat-oar headstock is about it. So, I built one.
I took a few pictures before I put it together. This is a Mahogany body... Again, Alpine White
Bag of parts...
A little drilling and cussing later, here it is:
Wolfgang neck profile on the Bubinga neck... No finish. No oil, nothing. It doesn't "feel like bare wood" it actually IS bare wood.
Contoured heel...
And here is the kind-of-interesting part... The bridge:
So, Warmoth offers two Strat flat-mount bridges, Vintage and Narrow. Vintage is pretty wide esp. with a 1&11/16ths nut, so I chose the narrow.
I didn't think much of it until I took it out of the bag and saw the saddles; s-bent saddles. I don't generally like these, and I was hoping for something more like what's on the Gotoh and Hipshot bridges.
What's worse, when setting it up, because of the compound-radius board, the saddles were up REALLY high, out of the range of adjustment. I could have used longer screws, but the angle of the screw was actually starting to bend the "S" right out of the saddle!
I ordered a set of Graph Tech String Saver Classics for it in the "narrow" width, and they are slightly too narrow. I used 4 small squares of copper shielding tape between each pair of saddles and got them spaced properly. Works very well, and it's not really noticeable. I think you can sort of see it in the close-up pic but you'd never notice it in person.
OK, one of them is. I've been meaning to do this for a while, I figured I'd wait until I had them both together. Both are 10-16 compound radius necks with 1-11/16ths nut width, and both are Alpine White, but that's about all they have in common.
First up we have a very 80's style single-hum, Alpine White, Alder Warmoth Strat body with a contoured heel, and a Black Korina neck.
To finish it off, a set of Gotoh tuners, Original Floyd Rose, CTS solid shaft 500K pot and a Duncan Custom TB5 in the bridge.
Another view of the neck... Note the rear-mount R3 Floyd nut (like I said, 80's style) and of course, the Gotoh's:
Bridge shot: This is what Warmoth calls a "flush mount" Floyd. This is exactly how I remember Kramers being in the 80's. Note there is not much room between the base plate and the body. It is set up dive-only but you could get a LITTLE pull-up without shimming the neck.
Now, also, I shim the bridge so the outer saddles are raised, which makes the saddle radius about 20". I like this on a Warmoth. I no longer do this to a 12-16 because it doesn't make enough difference to be worth the trouble. But, on the Warmoth, I like it.
6100-size fret wire. This is Warmoth "61GD" fret wire. Not quite as hard as stainless, but much harder than nickle. I think this is frets 2-4. I do NOT have a light touch, and the guitar has been played heavily for about 3 months... there is zero fret wear.
So, that one has been done for a while. Still needs to have the frets leveled but it's not bad at all, so I'll get around to it one of these weekends.
In the meantime, with that project a success, I decide to order something a little more off-beat...
You notice how you can't find a decent hard-tail Fender Strat? The Billy Corgan with the crap nitro over poly and the CBS boat-oar headstock is about it. So, I built one.
I took a few pictures before I put it together. This is a Mahogany body... Again, Alpine White
Bag of parts...
A little drilling and cussing later, here it is:
Wolfgang neck profile on the Bubinga neck... No finish. No oil, nothing. It doesn't "feel like bare wood" it actually IS bare wood.
Contoured heel...
And here is the kind-of-interesting part... The bridge:
So, Warmoth offers two Strat flat-mount bridges, Vintage and Narrow. Vintage is pretty wide esp. with a 1&11/16ths nut, so I chose the narrow.
I didn't think much of it until I took it out of the bag and saw the saddles; s-bent saddles. I don't generally like these, and I was hoping for something more like what's on the Gotoh and Hipshot bridges.
What's worse, when setting it up, because of the compound-radius board, the saddles were up REALLY high, out of the range of adjustment. I could have used longer screws, but the angle of the screw was actually starting to bend the "S" right out of the saddle!
I ordered a set of Graph Tech String Saver Classics for it in the "narrow" width, and they are slightly too narrow. I used 4 small squares of copper shielding tape between each pair of saddles and got them spaced properly. Works very well, and it's not really noticeable. I think you can sort of see it in the close-up pic but you'd never notice it in person.
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