The build looks class! I've actually been considering doing something very similar, I have one of those Subzero bass VI's that I sometimes use with a jazz trio but I'm not a fan, a Strat style seems perfect for this kind of instrument. Good to see those Ebay necks are quality too!
Absolutely love the video and have been consistently rewatching it for the best 2 weeks. Don’t see many baritone builds on RU-vid. Thank you for explaining everything clearly on your process!
You are the guitar whisperer. 😂 I bought one of those DIY double neck stratocaster kits and I converted the bottom from regular guitar to baritone with just a set of strings and a baritone neck. I used guitar fetish Texas specials pickups. It turned out great.
@@TomTobin67 oh, is it the one with the carbon fiber pickguard and holographic boobs on the neck plate? You have comments turned off on the video, but I'd love to see a follow up video. Looks like a 28" baritone neck? You ever get it adjusted to be playable?
I've been wanting to re finish my Squier mustang neck for that fender neck look and this is perfect! vintage clear and satin nitro! definitely buying these! awesome baritone build by the way! 👌
If you tune this E to E it's not actually a baritone, this makes it a bass. Also, the middle pickup being RWRP has nothing to do with tone, it just makes the in between positions hum cancelling. But pedantry aside this is an amazing build. I wish I had a CNC machine! I have so many ideas, but I don't have the practical woodworking skills to realise them.
Very inspiring! Watched this more than once now-I might do similar. I’m guessing it’s not strictly necessary to move and re-route the bridge and middle pickup. The tone would just shift a bit warmer with these 2 pickups being pushed a bit forward from the bridge. I’m thinking I might try this at first, that way a noob like me doesn’t have to route anything, and I can use a standard pick guard, or a “loaded” one ready to go. Then if I don’t like it, I have the option to move the pickups back closer to the bridge later. I’m thinking of doing this on either a hard tail Strat or Tele. I think the same neck maker does a 30” 24 fret T-style neck as well. I might consider installing a top mount Xtrem with roller bridge-easy install. Sparking lots of ideas!
Cool Vid! I built a 30 inch Tele bodied Bari a couple years ago and I can hardly put it down. It's Pearl Lime Green with a hint of GoldBurst on the front, and Pearl Eggplant Purple on the back and neck. Did my own abalone inlays. Hipshot tuners and bridge. Aluminum strip body binding. DiMarzio D-Sonic in the bridge and DiMarzio Evolution in the neck...talk about tone! It's a beast. I call it the *Tele-Baller Booty-Caster.* You can see it on my channel along with a couple other builds.
RU-vid has been recommending this video to me for the past couple of weeks, and today I finally gave it a go. I have to say: instant subscribe. Baritone have been on the back of my head for a while now (mostly because of The Bunn, a Canadian RU-vidr / sludge guitarist that advocate heavily pro-baritones). Anyway, loved the song you did on the end of the video. Loved the build, your video setup... thank you for your work!
Awesome video! I’m so glad I came across this. I have a strat body with swimming pool route sitting around that I planned on converting to use a hardtail. Once I get that completed, I may do this. I’ve been wanting a baritone.
About 6% of your scale length for the bridge pickup. I've just strung my scratch build 28.625" scale 7 string. You may also want to look at the spacing for the neck pick-up vs the original 25.5" scale neck position, and try to get that closer to the neck itself (it means the pickups spread a little which I didn't pickup during the video).A little less neck break angle at the neck pocket with moving the bridge and scale. Easier with a CNC but possible without just take your time and be accurate and planned. Awesome build.
Replace the ceramic magnets with neodymium. There's a guitar myth-buster guy on youtube that made his own homemade neo pups as well as an alumitone, AND a bigsby setup that you can dive bomb. Long story short, neos have the clarity and focus of the best alnico, with the power and bass that they lack, particularly on single coil pups. Slightly light on the windings+N52 neo magnets = great sounding pups instead of cheap ceramics.
I wanted to do something similar but concert an SG style short scale bass to resemble an EB6. Wish Epiphone would do a version of those, it would be a cool competitor to the fender stuff
Just a quick anecdote about cheap Chinese ebay necks: I bought a $90 roasted flame maple neck and it's a nice piece of wood but the frets were *horrible*. Jagged, sharp edges and several were lifting up already. Ended up pulling 6 of them out just with my fingers. Now I'm working on refretting the whole thing and had to buy some new tools to do so. That $90 neck turned into around $200 and a lot of labor and there are still several ways it could go wrong. If I could take it back I'd just spend the extra $ on a quality neck and avoid all the trouble.
Yikes. I've bought about 4 or 5 Chinese eBay necks already and haven't had any major issues. I certainly level the frets on them but I would do that with any overseas guitar.
Super nice. I picked up one of the Cabronita Squire Baritone Teles a few years ago, but have always considered doing one DIY. Maybe this was the inspiration I needed! Great Video Mark, and subscribed.
For the bridge and bridge pickup, could you have used a top-load Telecaster assembly that is flat? That would allow you to use a cool Telecaster bridge pickup on a Baritone, AND, it would cover the original string-through body holes. Sounds cool, I think I might try it. I really enjoyed your content, Thank You EDIT, Additional thought, I'm pretty sure they make stack single coil humbuckers with ceramic magnets, just a thought if high gain is a consideration.
@@MarkGutierrez SO many options available these days. I remember trying to find guitar parts back in the late 1970s, I was usually ordering by phone and mailing in a money order! 4 weeks later the part arrived! My gosh how times have changed. Your Baritone turned out great, thanks for sharing your build with us.
Great vid and great build! Totally didn't just inspire me to order one of these necks and actually learn how to use my CNC properly. Nope. Totally didn't just happen.
my idea is to build a baritone neck with +2 frets in a standard 25.5 inch body. I went to stewmac fret position calculator and went by trial and error until I got 28.62 inches, which you get from fret 2 to the other 26 frets the same distance between then, plus the "negative" frets from nut to 2nd. It will have the same distance between a standard neck, but will be like standard E tunning from 2nd to 26th fret in a 25.5' and more 2 semitones from nut to 2nd fret in a 28.62'
Stringjoy allows you to make custom sets of whatever you want, you know that right? They even have a present Bass VI set that is exactly what you built there
A not-inexpensive project I have done the line, but a similar goal is down the line for me. I’m going to buy a 30” scale Bass VI neck from Alef guitars (I’m big into aluminum guitar stuff right now) but just build the body myself out of reclaimed wood. Single humbucker in the P position. I’ll need to put some sort of counterweight in the bottom and futz with the strap button positions for best comfort for whatever body shape I go with (which will also be designed for best comfort for my playing style and position). Metal is heavy, yknow?
Also, you can do a full custom set from stringjoy. I’m doing that for my current guitar project. 13.5-60 balanced tension for DADgad at acoustic tension. I love maximum effort strings.
Sweet and easy. 1. Go buy me a CNC machine. 2. Go buy some cheap guitar parts. 3. Go buy some flowers to look at and fondle before I start. 4. Buy a drill press.
Would like to try this with a $60 unifinished strat style kit off Amazon, so that I can Shou Sugi Ban my own finish on it, as I used in my van conversion ceiling...
What you have built is basically a Fender bass VI which is not really a baritone. Baritone guitars are generally tuned to C, B, or A, below the standard guitar low E while a bass VI is tuned even lower to an octave below a regular guitar's low E (the same as a bass guitar). The stringset for a bass VI would take care of what you are after without having to struggle buying multiple sets of strings. Fender as well as a few others make these bass six string sets 024 (wound) to 084 is common but there are sets with 090 and 095 for the low string. Cool beast you made though!!!
@@hamesonjarris While it seems it is somewhat open to opinion what constitutes a baritone exactly, a bass VI is a bit of a different beast than a "normal" baritone guitar. Not sure what scale length and string sets those guys use but if they are 30" scale and have all wound strings then I'd say they are playing bass VI type instruments rather than baritones.
@ryanmartin2343 What exactly constitutes as being "fun at parties" is a pretty seriously wide definition and depends entirely on an individual's personal taste. ;)
@@7171jaythe only difference between a bass vi and a baritone is the strings. Danelectro invented the 6-string bass in the 50s, and Fender followed with their Bass VI in the 60s. So originally these instruments were considered basses and tuned E-to-E. Later people started stringing them with lighter strings and tuning them to B-to-B calling it a baritone.
If you paid for a photo editor to do the car work and a builder /luthier to route the body or a cnc service . And add in your time and knowledge value , it’s cheaper for anyone off the street to buy a baritone squier haha . But I love your videos . 😊
I had a 28 5/8” Warmoth Strat. It was very pretty (black Limba body, ebony over Wenge neck), but not for me. Made money flipping it, and was without a Bari until last week, when I picked up a stock P90 Cabronita. 27” is the ticket for me.
Such a cool build! I've been wanting a Bass VI type guitar for a while now, so it's cool to see how easily one can be made. I'm curious, was there a reason that you didn't go for the Bass VI set of strings from Stringjoy? They have a sets with .90 or .95 6th strings available.
Hi. I remember reading through the description of the two packs of Bass VI sets they sell. I wasn't happy with the idea of an increased tension set. I ran the numbers of their balanced set through their string tension calculator. I wasn't happy either. I think I just wanted a custom set that would would for drop running. At lease that was my original plan. I ended up tuning to E. So in the end, I could have just picked up that Bass VI set.
This is so inspirational!!! I just wish you'd changed the curve of the scratch plate near the bridge instead of the little bit sticking out to cover the holes, but that's just me. Everything else is so great. Really nice colour choices. What is the tuning? Is it like a bass VI or is it G standard? Thanks for publishing your work on RU-vid like this!
Being a Bass VI player, I'm perusing this with interest... EDIT: Bravo on a stunning looking instrument. For help with strings (particularly in Bass VI tuning) I can highly recommend Newtone Strings Axiom set.
Thanks for the string suggestion. Just looked them up,. SOLD OUT. lol. I'm tuned to E. I like the way the .90 feels. I much prefer the tone over the .95. The Newton set comes with a 100! I feel like that would lean more towards a bass tone than a guitar tone. Thoughts?
@@MarkGutierrez yes the .100 does have a bit of low-end heft. As far as I'm aware Newtone will make your set to order as opposed to having sets ready to go, so they might be able to make a custom set to order for you. I also use their strings for my Chapman Stick and their quality is excellent.
awesome video! I did my first ever jazzmaster build/assembly with an all guitar fetish parts (except graph tech nut) this month and it was so much fun. I'd love to see you explain how you design and model in CAD.. did you have to design that body in cad prior to making the adjustments? or did you use the standard import spec strat body since thats what LIDOs are cut to?
For this build, accuracy of the body wasn't important. I literally downloaded the body off of grabcad. Wouldn't matter if the specs or dimensions were off cause I'm designing off of the center line with an origin point at the center of the end of the neck pocket. So even if the body wasn't a perfect match to the model, the center line is the same on both and I just used that has the origin point for the CNC.
I'm not a shredder, but I have wanted an inexpensive baritone guitar to do Glen Campbell "Lineman" and "Galveston" licks, some Eagles stuff and some Pete Anderson - Dwight Yoakam tunes. I'm wondering if you think this build could get the job done?
Hi, the neck is great. I don't remember what I did with the finish of the neck. I think I was spraying a lot of stain nitro back then. A rattle can of satin nitro from Stew Mac.
Great setup you got going on there! The guitar sounds amazing as well! What pickups did you use? Another question, I'm new to all of this, would not the length of the neck be good enough, rather than shifting the bridge and pickups? If not, why not? I also noticed that you did some cnc work on the bass of the neck, with the cnc, there's no audio only music, I'm not sure exactly what you did?
Hi, I used the cheapest ceramic pickups available on the market. I pulled them from an overseas guitar. Warmoth makes conversion necks that retrofit on any standard scale body. This neck is not a conversion neck, it's a traditional 30 inch neck, so we have to move the bridge back. Conversion necks avoid this by compensating the build of the neck outward, so the necks are longer toward the headstock. CNC work on the heel was to shave off 2 millimeters.
Do the tapers on those stringjoy strings end up behind the nut? I'm planning a build like this and was worried about what type of bridge to use (string through vs top load) due to the winding potentially not reaching all the way to the nut with normal non-baritone strings.
Hey, this is a really cool build. I'm currently in the process of converting an old LTD M-10 into a 27" scale baritone. Coincidentally I bought a very similiar neck from eBay with the blocks and the 70's style headstock. One question I have though, when CNC'ing the new pickup cavities, would it not have been easier to just route a "swimming pool"?
Hi Mark! Fantastic build. I watched a few times, and maybe I missed it, but could you explain what is going on when you are CNCing the heel of the neck? I'm assuming you had to modify it so that it would fit the import strat spec pocket. Did you have to modify the length, width, or depth?
Ok, so I have all of my parts. Routed the pickup cavity freehand, making my own pickguard, and putting the parts together. I see why you removed material from the heel. I didn't, and the height on my bridge is set at max. Still fully playable. My neck certainly doesn't look as pretty. Lots of little cosmetic flaws. But functionality is perfect. The body is actually great for the price. So, for a litle over $160 usd, I now have a quite decent bass vi/xl baritone. Thanks so much for posting this video, Mark. BTW, I love your other videos too.
