I posted this thread on another forum and got back this first hand response. It's a little long but a pretty interesting and telling read:
" what i learned in my research on building a project guitar
yeah, i know, it's blahblahblahblah..
but i thought i'd share for anyone who is interested in building project guitars..
in my years of playing, and building the odd project here and there, the one thing that i consistently saw, was that if it sounded spanky without being plugged in, it'd sound spanky plugged in.
and if it sounded dead sitting in the shop, and if i plugged it in, dead.
(now, this is not to be confused with lots of gain, and radical tone shaping, and all that...
just the basic pure sound of the guitar amplified, versus acoustically playing it)
and i've switched out bridges and electronics, even nuts, and they all did do a little something....
but i think the magic comes from the 'tone' of the neck, and the 'tone' of the body.
and then the mojo is, marrying the two together.
when i researched and built my project strat (see past thread on 'project strat'), my luthier and i, had at our disposal, 5 strats in house, for sell or repairs or work....
3 fender strats of various vintage and country of origin....
and 2 brand new american made strats.
plus, we had a few other strat wannabes-- Godin, Ibanez, the odd project guitar..
we did, at various points in the discovery process, take apart most of them.
one thing i noticed, was that certain 'necks' would not pass the 'tap test'.
what the tap test was, was simply hanging the neck (with all hardware off of it) from a hanger thru a machine head hole, and 'tapping' on the wood with the finger.
you could rap the back of the neck with your knuckle, and you could hear a distinct 'ring' or 'tone' in the wood.
every single neck was different.
some were solid maple, some maple with maple caps, some with rosewood caps....
all different.
as you would expect.
but some were dead sounding, and some were very lively.
needless to say, the 'lively' sounding necks, sounded the best on the bodies.
the bodies, a similar thing.
when i asked for my strat body, i decided on alder, and i specifically asked for the 'lightest 2-piece alder body' they had...
why 2 piece?
i don't know, i guess cuz the nicest body i found in the test, was a lightweight, 2 piece body that had a nitro finish on it, so that's what i patterned after.
i also had read a lot of articles on pros that had vintage strats, and that seemed to be a common thread.
when i got my alder body, while it was still raw, it had that 'tap tone'.
now when we experimented with various pieces at hand, you could hear the difference in the overall sound of the guitar (plugged in or not) when switching the necks out with different bodies.
also, the necks that had vintage style truss rods (one of the reasons i went with the USACG necks over the warmoth necks) was another big 'aha'.
it seems that, the way the wood is cut, and how the truss rod was installed, made the biggest difference of all, over wood types and fingerboard selection...
i took a maple/rosewood warmoth neck, with a gibson conversion scale, the double expanding truss rod thingy (which really makes the neck heavier and somewhat dead sounding) and a/b'd it against my freshly minted USACG neck with rock maple neck and pau ferro fretboard, basically the same neck as the usacg, except for the truss rod and the fret wood.
no contest.
my neck had the 'tap tone', and the warmoth did not.
plain and simple.....
i was absolutely convinced.
another difference BETWEEN my neck and the warmoth i compared to, in particular was the construction of the 'tiltback' headstock.
the usacg uses a volute construction...
the warmoth used scarf joint.
that seems to have some bearing as well.
moral of the story....
it's gotta be the wood.
--------------------------------------------
the first body, was perfect.
1st body, i said....
i had asked for the lightest piece of alder they had....
and tommy at USACG hand picked the body.
when i got it, i did the 'tap test', and it was very toneful.
i did the rough sand, luthier did the fine sand, sealer, primer, topcoat, and after it was dry, we started putting it all together...
when we got the trem posts in, and put the trem on...and put the springs in to tension... it developed a crack right at one of the posts!
seems that there was a hairline fracture in the body, that cut right across the center of one of the trem post holes....
we didnt' see it while we were working on the body, but it was obvious once the crack occurred.
we called USACG, and they did me right.
they sent me ANOTHER body gratis...... let me keep the one that we had almost finished!
so the luthier, kept the body for himself, glued the crack, set it up just like mine, and voila! clone guitar!!!
the 2nd body, was absolutely wonderful.
that was the only issue we had. the neck pocket was super tight (another request on my part) and the tolerances were all as close as you can get a CNC machine to give you!
story about their bodies, on the USACG site...."
when I played it through my Mesa MkIII. I will go and play many many guitars before I find one that I bond with. I still havent found a Tele.