My Beloved Gold Warmoth SCPB

[Delberthot]

As you may have read in my thread over in the repairs section, I decided to paint the headstock of my gold Warmoth P bass to cover up a couple of holes and to allow me to fill in an area next to the nut that I'd damaged while trying to get a JAN III to fit.

Being an impatient bugger, I decided to put it back together today rather than wait a bit longer to make sure that the paint was hard enough.


I took some pictures to finish my thread and decided to do the whole bass:








The new shiny black headstock:





An arty shot for all the buffs out there

[Delberthot]

Another arty shot - the back this time









Hmmmmmmm gold







And the reason no other bass will ever be as good as this one -



I went through 50 odd basses to find the components that I wanted in a bass. You've probably heard it all before but I don't care.


Mahogany body from my 30th Anniversary Stingray & Epiphone Thunderbird

Wenge neck & JAN III from my Warwick Thumb NT5

Ebony fretboard with no front markings from my Bass Collection SB565

SD Basslines pickup (albeit single coil rather than MM stylee) & Gotoh 201 bridge from my Modulus Flea Bass


I chose the gold flake because my Flea bass had been silver flake and thought gold would look better and more snazzy on stage.




I can be quite vain sometimes and I have to say that I have not ever seen a bass nicer than this. Sure, it may not be everyone's cup of Earl Gray but there is nothing like it. The closest I have seen to it is the gold sparkle G&L ASAT which is still a million miles away in terms of everything apart from the colour.


After just over a year, I am still experimenting with the electronics. I even had a Bartolini 2 band EQ in it over Christmas but prefer the passive sound. I was thinking of wiring the pickup to the jack next as I don;t use the tone control. I have also thought about either getting another Lollar pickup like the one I had in my other Warmoth or trying one of the split coils that SD & Fralin do. I believe that Sting uses the SD one in his '57 single coil.


Suffice to say that I am 99% certain that the Corvette $$ 5 string will be up for sale very shortly. Lovely bass to play and very fast but can't touch the Warmoth in terms of looks and overall playability to me.

[budget bassist]

Glad to hear it matey! As long as you like it, that's all that matters right? Fwiw, i think the finish is stunning, and the wenge neck looks really really nice!

[Tait]

what always strikes me about this bass is how its very normal in some respects, just a 54 p copy, a fender-alike and yet its so different, too, what having a sparkly gold paint job, and a dark wood neck etc. its kind of like a bass oxymoron, a different, unique fender copy

[7string]

I had one of the Fender '51 RI's, but I suppose that your Warmoth is much better than that.

I was so impressed by how such an outwardly simple bass and produce such great sounds

[Sibob]

Slightly off topic, but have you got any pictures of your Bass Collection SB565 Delberthot?

The P stills looks the nuts btw! Why didn't you find some gold sparkle paint for the headstock though?

Si

Edited January 27, 2009 by Sibob

[alexclaber]

I wonder how my bass would look in that finish, it's just so damn cool!!! With such simple passive electronics I bet the tone is really responsive to how you play and with a less coloured cab it should be fantastic. I too love wenge necks, they let through a whole bundle of growl but only when you want it. Do you do much palm-muting and thumbing with it?

Alex

[Delberthot]

I can't find any pictures of the Bass Collection. It had an Ash body with a Paduak top with matching headstock, gold hardware and the ebony fretboard.


I find that the simplicity of the electronics mean that I have more control over the sound. i can play with a regular touch and it sounds very warm and typical P bass but if I dig in it can get very dirty and gnarly with a real bite to the sound.

I've also discovered that it responds really well to slapping in the same position as Larry Graham, ie where a normal split P pickup would be. I also use a kind of slapping, picking motion so instead ofs lapping the string dead on, I play right through it if that makes sense?


I did think about painting the headstock sparkly gold but If I wasn't able to get an exact match then it would look odd. I noticed that Warwicks look good with the black with gold hardware and the silver logo so that's where I got the inspiration from that.


The '51 reissue was a fantastic bass- so much so that I had thought about getting it down to SIMS to work the body into the '53 shape and repaint it sparkly gold but I thought it would be better to get the money from selling the bass then getting one made exactly as I wanted.

It was the most difficult bass I ever had to sell as it sounded the best, I just couldn't live with the lack of contours. I could've bought the Sting bass but for the same money I was getting something very bespoke and unique.


I am contemplating getting a bridge that allows me to adjust the string spacing as I liked the closer spacing of the Warwick 5 string. I wouldn't go as close and I need to make sure that the strings wouldn't be a mile away from the pickup poles if I did adjust it.


There is one thing I've always wanted for it - a gold bridge cover in the same style as the originals. The later covers are very easy to come by but I've never seen an original style gold one.

Edited January 27, 2009 by Delberthot

[alexclaber]

[quote name='Delberthot' post='392520' date='Jan 27 2009, 10:54 AM']I find that the simplicity of the electronics mean that I have more control over the sound. i can play with a regular touch and it sounds very warm and typical P bass but if I dig in it can get very dirty and gnarly with a real bite to the sound.

I've also discovered that it responds really well to slapping in the same position as Larry Graham, ie where a normal split P pickup would be. I also use a kind of slapping, picking motion so instead ofs lapping the string dead on, I play right through it if that makes sense?[/quote]

Exactly. Same with my bass - I find this kind of thing is particularly noticeable with passive single pickup basses (or when you have a pickup soloed on a dual pickup bass like mine). That slapping action of going through the string is a very LG thing too. It's nice to shift the thumb back to there when you want more thump and less ping. Likewise when I want to get dirty I'll pluck in a more downwards fashion up near the end of the neck to get lots of clatter, or I might dig in really hard really close to the bridge to get tons of growl.

[quote name='Delberthot' post='392520' date='Jan 27 2009, 10:54 AM']There is one thing I've always wanted for it - a gold bridge cover in the same style as the originals. The later covers are very easy to come by but I've never seen an original style gold one.[/quote]

A good reason not to get a bridge cover is to get into palm-muting. You can get so many different vibes through muffling the string when thumb plucking, especially on a fairly bright bass where you aren't scared to knock off some treble. Something you can never do with EQ is to mute as you pluck to mellow out the attack but then release the muting straight away so the full harmonic content builds as the note develops.

Alex

[Delberthot]

I've just ordered another couple of CTS 500k pots.

I'm going to rewire it as per the 1957 specs with a 0.1uF paper in oil cap. Glad my bass is rear routed cos these caps are huge.


Still tempted to get another Lollar pickup for this to replace the Quarter Pounder.