Delberthot

This is my second Warmoth build and as of yet I have to find another bass that sounds or plays anywhere near as good as my first one. It is really important to get the right parts for what you want. With my gold one the body was mahogany so I just used standard Schaller machines like you would find on any US Fender or Rickenbacker but this one is ash and a lot lighter so I wanted to eliminate any possible neckdive. That is why i went for the lightweight tuners on this one. My gold one has a Quarter Pounder, 500k CTS pots and standard cap as I wanted a powerful sound whereas this one has a Lollar pickup, 250k pots, paper in oil cap and cloth covered wiring as I am looking for something a bit mellower and closer to the original. I've used Gotoh 201 bridges on both basses really just down to money. I can get these direct from Warmoth for about £15 each whereas a standard Fender one I think comes in at about twice that. The Gotoh bridges are also very easy to setup. Actually, the second best bass I ever played was my 2 tone sunburst '51 reissue and the basis for both of my Warmoth's as I just loved the sound and playability of the thing. The only thing I disliked and the main reason for selling was the lack of body contouring hence me going for the '54 style instead. One thing that i will always say is that if you get one made and you don't like it, you will get washers for it as they aren't that widely known in the grand scheme of things and considered as merely parts basses. This is why it is very important to make sure that you are getting exactly what you want. It took a long time to weigh up different components, read books on basses, ask questions on Forums such as this one and probably the most important part of the whole thing for me was to buy, play and then sell about 50 different basses to find what it was that I wanted. An example would be that it took me about a month to decide on the colour. There were only 2 colours widely available at the time - Blonde and 2 tone sunburst. I'm still contemplating getting a white scratchplate for it.

Its not the first time I've had to enlarge the holes on a control plate. What I do is after I have screwed the plate to the piece of wood I drill a pilot hole right in the middle of each hole then get one of those drill bits that are meant for wood. I don't remember what they're called but they are really wide at the end with a pointy bit protruding. I find that the pointy bit helps the drill stay in the pilot hole so that I get a good cut. I drill kneeling down with one foot on the plate to keep it steady leaving both hands free to drill with. The metal is a bit rough around the edges but the trick is just to attach the pots as it flattens the rough edge out slightly and effectively becomes like another washer to keep everything in place

Hmm, can't find a website for Gotoh nor a distributor of any kind. Bit strange for one of the largest manufacturers of guitar parts in the world. I've emailed the place I bought them from to see if they can point me in the right direction

I did drill pilot holes for the screws but they still managed to break.

As i mentioned, the holes for the pots were too small so I enlarged them. I was really amazed how easily the soldering went. I'm not exactly the best at it but everything just seemed to work straight away. Anyway, here's more pictures. I'm really amazed at how much birdseye there is in the neck as I only requested standard maple. I'm not going to post any more until it is ready and then I'll do some kind of grand unveiling or something.

Well most of the buld is going well so far. a couple of things have gone wrong however: The scratchplate hadn't been cut correctly here it meets the control plate but after a couple of minutes with a knife I had it fitting; the other thing that completely baffled me is that he I was installing the tuners I managed to snap 3 of the screws. Luckily only one per tuner. I found this really odd as I've fitted loads of tuners before but these ones seemed to snap with no warning and with no effort. I'm wondering if they are made of a lightweight soft metal to help keep the overall weight down. I'm going to email gotoh and see what they say. I'm not going to be able to get the screws out so I'll probably just superglue the heads back on to preserve the look. Getting the laquer off the frets was pretty straightforward as well. I couldn't find any masking tape so I used brown tape applied very lightly and used the steel wool to take the finish off the frets

I've been trying various parts against others and I have to say that the neck is a really tight fit - not so much so that it would cause a problem when fitting it but in that it is absolutely perfect. I've tried lots of basses and none of them have had such a tight fitting neck. The cut out for the scratchplate where it meets the control plate hasn't been cut correctly so they don't meet. I'll neet to draw round where it should go and cut out the small amount that needs taken out in order for it to fit. The CTS pot shafts are too thick for the control plate as well (neither part bought from Warmoth) so I'll get the drill out later and make the holes larger to accomodate them. I've worked out an order that I will be approaching the building of the bass - 1 - Mask off the fretboard and take the excess finish off the frets with 000 grade steel wool 2 - Fit the nut 3 - fit the machineheads 4 - attach the pots to the control plate (after enlarging the holes) 5 - take care of all the soldering of the 2 pots and jack socket. 6 - Fit the pickup and solder it to the pots 7 - Attach the control plate to the body 8 - Fit the bridge 9 - Fit the straplocks 10 - Attach the neck to the body 11 - Offer the scratchplate onto the body and work out how much to take off so that it fits round the control plate 12 - Fit the thumb rest 13 - Fit the strings and tune up 14 - fit the string retainer 15- check the intonation and action and file the nut if necessary 16 - fit the bridge and pickup covers There we go, 16 steps to get the bass up and running. I would normally be looking at a couple of hours to get it done but the strings won't be here until tomorrow so I have to stop after step 12. I'm taking care of the soldering and attaching most of the body parts before the neck goes on because it was a bit awkward the last time to maneuvere it with the neck attached. More photos to follow

Suppose i could've been clearer but if you look at my post saying that it was out for delivery with UPS this morning, my next one was me saying that I now had the parts after parting with £100 to the UPS guy. Everyone else seemed to have got the impression that he £100 was an import charge of some kind and I did mention in my first post that the body and neck were on their way from Warmoth. I didn't mention any other parts. To elaborate - the parts that i got from Warmoth came to £500 including delivery, taxes & duty. These included: Maple neck with maple fretboard finished in vintage satin finish Swamp ash body finished in butterscotch blonde black single ply scratchplate Gotoh 201 bridge Neck plate, screws, pickguard screws an string retainer. Completely separately I bought: Lollar single coil pickup Fender bridge and pickup covers Control plate Paper in oil cap 250k CTS posts Fender jack Tusq nut Optima Chrome strings 45 - 100 This lot came to about £100. The other parts I had from previous basses

that was just for the body, neck, neck plate, string retainer, scratchplate and gotoh 201 bridge. The machineheads, pickup, pots, jack, straplocks, wire, cap, nut, pickup & bridge covers were extra. In total, including shipping and all taxes, it probably came to about £650 in total which is just slightly more than the gold one came to.

Yes, Warmoth charged my debitcard on Friday for about £400- the £100.38 was VAT, duty etc

After parting with the princely sum of £100.38 I now have my body and neck. Its really hard to get the colour of the body right in a picture but here we go. I still need to get a nut for it and my strings aren't here either but apart from that I'm ready to start building it. The first thing to do will be to get the steel wool onto the frets to take the varnish off them. The building begins tomorrow

They are absolutely fantastic. I was unable to find what i was looking for with any other brand of bass. With the combination of woods and other parts I have been able to successfully create the bass of my dreams. I have gone down this route for this bass as I wanted something with a more traditional melow sound as the gold Warmoth '54 is totally in your face. I've just checked on the UPS site and the body and neck are out for shipping from 7am this morning

Well I've just had word that my neck and body are on their way from warmoth via UPS so should be here tomorrow. I cannot wait - just like goldie I've spent a lot of time working out which parts are going to be best for it and the moment of truth is almost here. The components that I have chosen are: gotoh resolite reverse tuners Lollar vintage SCPB pickup CTS 250k pots vintage cloth wiring paper in oil cap I may use one of the resistors that came with the cap gotoh 201 bridge Fender Bridge and Pickup covers. Schaller straplocks Maple neck with maple fretboard finished in vintage satin finish Swamp ash body finished in butterscotch blonde black scratchplate and chrome other bits. Optima chrome strings 45, 60, 80, 100 I'm planning on taking lots of pictures as I am building this one to show just how easy they are to put together and get set up

what make of mp3 player is it? is it a hard drive or flash memory one? I'm usually pretty good at fixing these kind if things

I'm left handed and owe playing right handed to Mike Reid. Not him of 'Pat' fame but the other one that used to do Saturday Superstore. I must've been about 10 or 11 and was doing the usual thing you'd do a that age of picking up a tennis or badminton racket and pretend you were playing the guitar. Being naturally left handed I thought nothing of playing it left handed. That was until I saw him with a guitar and thought I'd been holding it the wrong way round so immediately switched to right handed air guitar. Stuck with it ever since. I write with my left hand, play pool left handed and play darts with both hands equally badly. It does make you wonder if there would've been a lot more lefty guitars out there if players had gone with playing left handed as opposed to changing. It also makes me wonder if I'd have been better, worse or the same had I chose to play lefty. The drummer in my band also teaches and he was saying that no one teaches drums left handed any more

I would personally only hace a Jap one I've had penty of MIM & MIA and I feel that the only oes that have any consistency are The Jap ones. You'd be ard pushed to find a bad one. look at Fender basses that begin 027 or 029 and they are the Japanese ones. There are too few of them still available.

Absolutely - they used to use nitrocellulose laquer. It reacted to everything from the foam mutes under Jazz pickup covers to the scratchplate itself. Don't even put one anywhere near a foam guitar stand. Poly is much more stable and resisant to knocks, not to mention a lot safer to use as well.

2 basses that I loved but had to sell because of neckdive were a Thumb NT5 and a Thunderbird. Thankfully mine does not suffer from this. Actually, I picked the wenge neck as I loved the Thumb's neck and I picked mahogany for the body after the thunderbird (and my 30th anniversary stingray)

I've just realised that I may have come across as a smart a$$ which I'm not. I just don't feel the need to practice. I used to remember reading magazies and you'd get these guys who'd been playing for years saying that the maybe picked their bass up once or twice a week. At the time I couldn't believe that if you loved doing something so much you would only do it now and again. Buddy Rich never practiced but then again he was $h!t hot.

Usually active pickups are potted from experience so it makes it nigh on impossible to get into them. How about making it easier on yourself and getting a prewired harness? I've got one coming tomorrow to try in my Warmoth P bass and am hellish at soldering. as far as I know they do different versions for active and passive pickups but I could be remembering some random information about something else. You can more or less get what you want - Mine is a 2 band, single pickup one with a main volume and stacked treble and bass so as to avoid drilling another hole in the bass.

Don't have a Gecko but I do have a Warmoth. Mine is a '54 reissue precision. Mahogany body, Wenge neck and Ebony fretboard. Everything is gold right down to the frets. Their stuff is first rate and unless you get a maple fretboard there's little you have to do to get them up and running. Its easily the best bass I have ever owned and not even slightly neck heavy. Its a welcome change from the usual Ash/Alder/Maple/Rosewood basses that you find on the high street without going exotic as it gives you access to a whole lot of woods that are normally only available from the boutique guys without paying boutique prices. I put my current one together for about £600 which is around the same as a second hand MIA Fender. I should be getting my next one through at the beginning of October. I'll probably take pics as I'm building it to show exactly how easy it is to assemble. I managed to get this one done for a total of £500. They are a bit of a gamble as they are considered parts basses and you'll lose a fair bit it it turns out not to be the one for you.

The Police - "When the world is Running Down" I read Sting's autobiography when I was on holiday last month and have been listening to them quite a bit recently. This will be followed by AC/DC - "Let There Be Rock"

Its funny but I very rarely pick up the bass at home and haven't practiced regularly at home for maybe 8 years but I am playing at the best I have ever played in my life and enjoying it more than I have ever done as well. My wedding band doesn't practice. We have 3 songs to learn for this weekend so the usual format is that I will listen to them for the first time on Saturday afternoon, write out the chords and go to the gig. We'll then play them at the gig. If we like any of them then they will be added to our setlist, if not they'll be filed away until such time as we are asked to play them again. This is a big diference to when I was first learning. I drove the neighbours nuts for years practicing every minute of the day that I could. I find that if I take a break from a song for long enough I will play it completely differently when I play it again and its almost like playing a new song.