The neck came in two weeks ahead of schedule! I was bummed at the four-week mark after ordering that it would take at least another month to come in—they corrected me and said that a custom order with a lacquer coat would take 8-10 weeks—but it got shipped to my house right at six weeks. My best guess is that August is traditionally the slowest time of the year for most businesses, especially retail; I could/would have got lucky with timing. Warmoth would have had more time to work on it and ship it sooner.
Having never done anything like this before, needless to say, I was a little bit nervous about how it would turn out. Trusting Warmoth's judgment with the specific planks of 3A birdseye maple they would use was one of the things that concerned me, as well as well what the gloss coat would look like on the finished product. Would I be satisfied?
Yes.
The CBS headstock! Definitely putting a custom logo on it at some point. The two holes drilled at the nut area
are the Floyd Rose neck prep. "R3" denoted. No lacquer there for
better contact with the nut when I install it.
Tuning peg holes drilled for Schaller machine heads.
Gorgeous and evenly-spaced birdseye maple! And that gloss coat is smooooooooth.
The birdseye looks even deeper and more rich on the fretboard than the back of the neck. Black dot inlays are simple. Definitely the right choice.
This is the truss rod system. The allen key hole on
the left is the main adjuster, obviously unavailable when bolted on the
body. The allen key hole on the right is for smaller adjustments. The
directions specify to leave as much slack (and natural underbow) in the
truss rod as possible while the neck is not strung up; otherwise, the
neck can wind up permanently back-bowed. Then you wind it up before install. I'm so thankful to not have to deal with truss rod adjustments behind the nut!
The one thing that I might possibly be miffed about is the fret size. The stainless steel SS6150 frets are finely inlaid, but when I specified "jumbo" I was thinking of the jumbo frets on my Jackson Soloist, which are wider. It's alright, though. The fret height is about the same give or take a few thousandths of an inch, and the scale length is exactly the same. These steel frets should last me a good long time. With that being said, though, I should have done just a little more research on the size. The frets still have lacquer on them left over from the finishing process. I will look into the proper way to clean them up (steel wool, probably) and dress them.
After the failures of my previous post, I'm excited for this project all over again!
An electric guitar is a piece (or set of pieces) of wood with wires and metal attached to it.
Energy is applied by the hands via picking or strumming or tapping of nickel or steel strings, causing a nearby inductor to generate a small amount of electric current. That current can be carried away through more wire to a device which shapes its waveform, amplifies it, and converts that energy into an audible tone carrying the same pitch as that of the plucked metal string.
Why do we care so much? What is it about the sight and sound of this combination of wood and wire that gets us so hyped up? Does a logo and a paint job really separate it from other musical instruments? Why is the [electric] guitar the chosen voice of rebellion and blues? Decades of rock and roll history are founded on it, and every generation has its new set of heroes who will create something new to inspire the next generation.
The physical copy of the cassette/vinyl/CD from the record store, the high-energy live show, the poster of the favorite axe-man hanging proudly in the bedroom, the hours practicing scales and licks, the garage jam sessions, the neighbors calling the cops with noise complaints, that first punk band, the three-song demo recorded in a weekend, the repeated trips to the music store, learning the rules of the load-in, playing local shows, et cetera... Every guitarist goes through this. It's part of the journey, with its victories and pitfalls, and soon it becomes less about the instrument and more about the mess of money, fame (or lack thereof, otherwise known as indie cred), sex, drugs, narcissism, touring, or generally having an excuse not to take responsibility for one's self.
Sometimes it's important to get back to the basics: An electric guitar is a piece of wood with wires and metal attached to it. And I'm wondering how much stock I can put into being angry and disappointed that the combination didn't do what I imagined I wanted it to do.
In short, I had a chance to test out some of the recent hardware I purchased, and I discovered that the Tremol-No is a Tremol-NO-GO. The jury's still out on the EVH D-Tuna. Here's what happened:
Experiment, Phase One: Trem Blocking
The Tremol-No was actually quite easy to install on my Jackson's Floyd Rose bridge. Slacken the strings, pull the springs out of the back of the guitar, remove the the claw plate (I left the original claw plate attached by solder joint to the ground wire because I knew I would be putting it right back), replace with the Tremol-No's claw plate and rod, re-attach the springs, set the shaft and anchor it to the tone block, then tune back up.
The Tremol-No installed. This is the "small clamp" type, not the "pin" type; notice how it latches onto the tone block on the right. The original claw plate and ground wire shown hanging out of the cavity.
The piece tucks away neatly into the bridge cavity without crazy modding or
drilling into the guitar, which is a plus. However, I was not fond at this
point that I had to move one of the springs down and away from where the A string sits on the bridge. In my mind, springs should be focused where the heavier strings (low E, A, D) are seated. And yes, I use four springs rather than three on purpose: it works much better that way when I tune my preferred Ernie Ball Power Slinky string gauge set (.011-.048) up to standard E tuning.
At first, the Tremol-No seemed to work, with a couple of quirks. I could lock the bridge into place, effectively making my Soloist a hardtail. The thumbscrew used for the drop-only mode (on the left) worked too, as long as I cranked it down extra tight and didn't make the mistake of pulling up on the trem arm, which could move it slightly out of place. Trem action in the floating mode stiffened a little, but hey, says I, I'm not a heavy Floyd dive-bombing player.
The thumbscrews have a very short amount of thread and it's impossible to know when to stop turning counterclockwise so that the piston inside can move freely. As a result, a quarter turn too much and they fall out. I also strummed the guitar to the point where they fell out on their own. It's hard to know when you're locked into place. Applying a tremendous amount of torque to the thumbscrews by freehand means there's ample opportunity to move the piston set a few millimeters in either direction, which translates to the tuning possibly being off by a few cents on the meter.
Notice the two black hex screws on the claw plate in the photo. I got the guitar in tune and then tightened them down, and immediately the guitar was noticeably out of tune. This didn't make any sense to me, but I thought that if I were to somehow decide to keep the Tremol-No, I would leave them loose.
Needless to say, I wasn't left with a good impression of the Tremol-No.
And it gets worse.
Experiment, Phase Two: Pitch Alteration
I locked the Tremol-No into hardtail mode and installed the D-Tuna on the top side of the bridge. Again, the installation was easy: slacken the strings, pop the low E out of the bridge, take the screw out, replace with the D-Tuna screw set and reverse the order.
Side view of the D-Tuna, in "D" position. Notice how the bridge saddle is leaning forward.
As I've mentioned before, the D-Tuna doesn't detract much from the total look of the guitar. Once I had a method of blocking the trem—to the best of my ability to crank down those nasty thumbscrews, that is—I focused on calibrating the piece. I loosened the nut screw and manually tuned the low E down to D with the D-Tuna sticking out. The action of sliding the D-Tuna into place is meant to
raise up on the bridge saddle, enough to raise the pitch a whole step
from D to E. However, when I pushed it in for E, of course it was way off.
The D-Tuna pushed in. Bridge saddle leans back to raise pitch but not near enough to get to E.
There's a hex screw in the side of the unit that allows for calibration (the bridge saddle is raised higher), but when I tried working with it, it went all the way to max without reaching E. Also, when it's calibrated at the max height, it's impossible to move.
Hex screw tightened down to raise the pitch even higher. D-Tuna angles downward and is resting on the body of my poor Jackson. At this point, that hex screw is too far in to allow the the thing to freely move anyway.
I tried different combinations of the Tremol-No and D-Tuna together, tightening up screws here, loosening screws there, and nothing worked. The Tremol-No was just way too tweaky, and the D-Tuna was unable to raise pitch from D out to E in.
Conclusion
I sent the Tremol-Noback to Musician's Friend and I'm ready to abandon the idea of a trem blocker altogether. Why not go the cheap route and cut out a block of wood to jam next to the Floyd Rose's tone block when I want to make it a hardtail? Because I might need to have a new wood block with different dimensions every time I changed strings, string gauges, or tuning. Wood expands and contracts with heat and moisture, and having a bolt-on neck for Big Riff won't help in the area of eliminating points of contact that can warp.
I have a suspicion that the D-Tuna's failure is due to the string gauge
on the Ernie Ball Power Slinky set, .048 being just a tad bit heavier
than a medium .046 or a light .042. There's no way I'm changing a string gauge I've played for over a decade to accommodate it. The point of allowing for a modification is to add to an existing preferred playing setup, not subtract from it. Anyway, I'm past the point of being able to return the piece to Musician's Friend, so I get to sit on it for a while and decide to either use it later or put it up on Craigslist. Now I'm back at a previous crossroad: whether the body should have the full recessed pocket for a floating trem setup, or an angled pocket so the bridge will rest on the body just in case I still might be convinced that I can get the D-Tuna to work properly. The latter doesn't have a lot of steam going for it—calibrating it may mean the piece winds up resting on and later scratching up the paint job on the body. I'm thinking that if I want a Floyd Rose bridge in a guitar, that I need to leave it at that. Don't mess with a good thing. Remember: An electric guitar is a piece of wood with wires and metal attached to it. While it's true that I'm building my instrument to my specifications, I see now that there are limitations which, if I tried to push too hard to control, will inevitably drive me absolutely insane. Separate note: I called Warmoth and asked why it was taking so long for the neck to come in. Per their definition, a gloss coat for a neck qualifies as a paint job, which means that it should take 8-10 weeks to complete for a custom piece. I should expect it to arrive in another 2-3 weeks. I'm getting impatient. I really want to see this thing even though I won't be able to use it for months. And now for an extremely timely word from the purveyors of weird, Devo. Because SCIENCE.
