so here's the baritone I just put together. as mentioned in my lunch report earlier this week, the secret ingredient is an allparts baritone neck designed to drop right into a tele body. I put it all together except for the first nut and set up that was done by a local shop. the wiring is still a little screwy but I get sound and can adjust the tone so I am good for now. the local guy that sold me the body sprayed it himself. he calls it Pontiac green. it's nitro. he also sprayed the neck for me. I am really digging the color and nitro feel though the neck needs to be played and played.
Notice the lack of a string tree. I used staggered locking tuners. I had to drill the holes of the tuners for the two lowest strings to accommodate the fat strings. it has D'addario's baritone set 14-68. because of the fatness of the strings, the locking tuners may have not have been super necessary but I like them and they are convenient. as this was a brand new neck, I had to make the tuner holes bigger with a reamer and then drill the little post holes for the Sperzels. that was not fun. I had to do this a number of times and a few of them are not as straight as I'd like but there comes a time when monkeying around on guitars interferes with my time actually playing them. It is routed for a neck pup but I decided to go esquire style in the name of keeping it simple.
as mentioned in my lunch report, the bridge pup is a SD hot rails. the routing in this body would not accomadate the ASAT bridge pup that I had intended to drop in it. the neck plate is G&L but that's it.
I just picked it up yesterday from the shop and spent most of last night trying to fix the wiring. it needs to be broken in but I can tell you that it has a very rich tone. this is not a Danelectro substitute. I don't know if it's the lipstick neck pup or the bridge on those that give them that classic Danelecto baritone sound but this doesn't have it. It sounds like a Tele with a whole new low end. I don't really play country music, I just like the tele body shape but without even trying, I was playing some tasty country licks this morning. it's a path I never intended to go down but will follow it. It hasn't been hard adjusting to the different scale yet because I have just been playing chord shapes that work well together. In a pinch, I could put a capo on the fifth fret and be back to the open notes I am used to. It was a surprise to hear it-the first time I barred it at the fifth fret, plucked the strings and heard what I am used to hearing as the open strings. this guitar will probably be helpful to ear training. And playing heavy. very heavy.
