Today I bought a new gig bag for my Warr Guitar. I went to a couple of music stores looking for a padded gig bag for a six string bass, which also happens to nicely fit a Warr Guitar. It’s a really nice case for my instrument and I’m mighty pleased with it. I’ll put pictures up tomorrow. For now, I’m busily noodling and trying to memorize new scale patterns.
Today I dropped off my Warr Guitar for the various changes I want to make. The local luthier doing the work is probably the best in the Northwest. I left him with extensive printed instructions of exactly what work I want done, along with diagrams (it’s impossible to remove my Project Manager hat…) and spent about 15 minutes walking him through it. And then I spent another 15 minutes shooting the breeze with him because he’s such an interesting guy.
Because one of the changes I’m making involves fabricating a new nut, which is typically made of bleached bone, the luthier will need to locate a fairly large segment of bone to use. This may delay the configuration of the instrument. Hopefully it’ll only take a week or so…
Today when I got home from work I found the mailman had delivered my Warr guitar strings. Looks like I’m paying a visit to the luthier tomorrow!
I’m generally skeptical of New Year’s resolutions. But among the things I’m trying to make happen this year is to get each of my instruments into the hands of a qualified luthier. I have a few [guitars, basses, banjos] that all need minor service and at this point there’s no way I can make time to do it at home. Fortunately, they’re all in good shape and there really aren’t any major repairs necessary. A little solder work here, a little adjustment there. One of my basses needs to have the frets dressed. One of the strats needs a bunch of minor tweaks. I’d like to replace the pickups on one of the fretless basses. My banjo needs to have its Keith/Scruggs tuners replaced. The tele needs a new output jack. And the list goes on.
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Today I was doing some practicing on the Warr guitar and realized I hadn’t gotten around to posting any pictures of it yet. So here is a picture of the front and back of the instrument. I have a ten string “Artist” model with 18v Bartolini pickups. The body is West African Zebrawood (species Microberlinia) and the is neck maple / walnut laminae with a Wenge fretboard. It’s still string in the standard manner with the bass strings reversed. I have ordered a few sets of new strings. Once they arrive I’ll drop the instrument off with Mike Lull and have him cut a new nut so I can reverse the bass strings.
Overall I think the instrument is really lovely. The wood is beautiful and it has a very solid percussive tone. And it’s pretty heavy. I haven’t decided on the processing signal path yet. I plan to use my POD XTLive to process the melody side, and I need to find another processor to manage the bass side. My assumption is that I’ll need a less complex processor for the bass. We’ll see…
My Warr guitar arrived yesterday via UPS. The shipper did a phenomenal job of preparing and packing this instrument. If you’re ever considering shipping a musical gizmo, this is the right way to do it.
(1) The shipper loosened the strings – important and smart since the instrument would be exposed to varying temperatures while being shipped.
(2) The guitar was snugly packed inside its gig bag. This doesn’t provide a great deal of protection but is designed for ease of transport and is a good first line of defense for bumps and surface damage.
(3) The gig bag was wrapped in 2 layers of bubble wrap. And yes, we had a total popfest with that stuff after I unpacked it.
(4) Surrounding the bubble wrap was a layer of cardboard fabricated to follow the contours of the gig bag. This meant any bumps or impacts would be distributed over a large surface area.
(5) The whole thing was inside a large box surrounded by about half a cubic yard of styrofoam peanuts.
It arrived safely and in great condition. I carried it to the garage and spent about 20 minutes unpacking it, carefully sorting all the packing materials for recycling. Once I got down to the gig bag, I brought it into the house, removed the instrument and leaned it against the wall in my home studio. After six hours it seemed temperature-adjusted so I tuned it up and began to noodle some music with it.
First thoughts… I need to convert this beastie to my playing style (and not the other way around). I immediately adapted my left-hand playing to the upper 5 strings, but the lower 5 strings are reversed. I understand the reasons for this, but my little sleestak brain can’t flip fast enough to make sense of it. Contrary to the conventional Warr / Stick approach, I intend to put the lower strings in the same order as a bass guitar. So I’ll be ordering a new set of strings immediately, and then finding a local guitar/bass tech to cut a new nut for me. The existing nut looks like it’s a high-density plastic, and I’ll probably go with Corian for the new one. As long as I have the strings off I’ll give the fretboard a good cleaning and dress the frets a bit. Looks like the bridge will need some compensation tuning as well.
But seriously. This is a really amazing machine and I can’t wait to get it into the mix.
Today the UPS man brought me a large brown box. And inside… my Warr Guitar! Hooray! At last it has arrived! Ten strings of groovy musical fun. Now I need about a month of practice…
