warmoth sales...

benwalker · Post by **benwalker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:30 pm

quick one.

i've seen a few guys on eBay that seem to follow one of two business models:
1) buy cheapass fender/squier body, change pickups, put warmoth neck on, sell for $1200 feigning some kind of snake oil setup process that would put ed roman to shame..
2) buy warmoth bits, put together with weird pickups etc, BIN for $3000 and hope someone buys it, whilst making your personal setup process seem amazing (see above).

I'd always thought that most bitsers or franken-strats were only worth the sum of their parts - so assuming I could get a body and neck for $1000, additional parts for $500, selling even at $2500 is pretty good profit for essentially a weekends work of bolting and soldering..

assuming i could build two strat-a-likes, how likely is it that they'd even sell? asking $2.5K for a guitar that isn't by a big name (e.g. anderson, suhr, tyler etc) seems a bit like taking the piss... and buying parts totalling $1500, then selling for $1600 doesn't seem like it's worth the effort by the time you add shipping and so forth...

thoughts?

James · Post by **James** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:39 pm

I was under the impression that these are generally worth less than the sum of their parts. You can get great guitars for the money when building parts guitars if you are patient for second hand parts or shop around a lot. I've never known people to pay more than the value of parts for this sort of thing, and usually the people swayed by a warmoth neck will know how much a warmoth neck costs.

Then again, the people who buy into this mojo stuff do tend to have more money than sense and it's perfectly possible you could earn a bit from it.

euan · Post by **euan** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:49 pm

The guitars are worth less than the sum of their parts.

benwalker · Post by **benwalker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:55 pm

yeah, it's just a random thought really. i got the neck for my bitser 2nd hand from strat-o-sphere, but found this guy:

um.. hi, 1996 called and asked for their html back...

putting low-end warmoth necks on what look like squier bodies with cheap tele bridges, then this guy

hi... 1996 again.. did we meet on geocities?

doing fender deluxe/cs parts paired with higher spec hardware.

imho, given $1400 I could put together something that would sell for maybe $1500. But then is it just a case of finding that one person that believes spending $2500 even though the sum of the parts is much smaller, is worth it.

dress it up in bullsh*t (10 point process to make sure the intonation is spot on..), and make sure the website is really really good.

Post by **Hurb** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:06 pm

Merged.

benwalker · Post by **benwalker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:09 pm

ta... first post claimed to have timed out whilst submitting, but apparently submitted anyway...

James · Post by **James** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:41 pm

There's a guy on offset who does something like this,but he relics them too. He basically tries to make guitars that look like vintage ones and then sells them for about a fair amount, but quite a bit less than vintage. I'll paste a bit up.

James · Post by **James** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:43 pm

Danocaster wrote:FS : Danocaster "Dirty Blonde"

here's another cool one - plays and sounds just great

* Alder Body - total weight 7 lbs 5 oz
* Uber thin Nitro - a dirty blonde - w/ weather chcking ( see bridge pic )
* 1 pc maple neck ( soft V to full C .88-.95 )
* COMPOUND RADIUS - 7.25 to 9.5- very comfortable like a vintage strat down low - flattening to 9.5 up higher for easier bending
* 6105 frets / 1 5/8" bone nut
* Nick Sorenson's Rocketfire pickups !!
* Full steel block bridge w/ F-stamped nickel saddles
* aged 1 ply guard , CTS pots , switchcraft , cloth wire, blah blah

$1600 shipped / paypal'd SOLD

He quite arrogantly calls them Danocasters but he's defintely got the relic process down.

link to his site

benwalker · Post by **benwalker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:11 pm

yowza -

mac galleries suck

relicing is good - see, that i could just about say is payable for and by the looks of things he's made some cash out of it... intrigued to know whether anyone would buy a bitser that is *just* a bitser but not financially prepared to take the risk just yet...

Rashomon · Post by **Rashomon** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:49 pm

Wow, for $1600 those had better be some PREMIUM parts.

James · Post by **James** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:58 pm

He mainly does teles by the looks of it. I think the thing is the vintage strat and tele market is astronomical. The vintage jag and jazz market is fairly reasonable.

There isn't much point putting down $3000 on a relic jazzy when it will buy you a genuine vintage one, but people will do it for a strat when they'd be looking at 10x that amount for an early one.

If you're going to do it you need to ask yourself some serious supply and demand questions. Can you put out a guitar that is made from parts that will be better and cheaper than a competing version. That danocaster guy says he sells around 5 a month, which seems like it would make a tidy side income. He's clearly aiming at the vintage mojo market and doing a better relic job than the companies themselves seem to do, so he has the customers. You'd need to spend a while thinking about target markets, how you're going to get your name and product out there (even if you're just chucking a few on ebay every now and then) and how you're going to elevate yourself above what is already there.

Given the way things are financially, if you have a few grand spare you could easily pick up a few abandoned projects for cheap, finish them up or use the parts to do other things, and sell as complete guitars later on. It's not quite a weekends worth of work type of plan, but there's some definite money in that if you have a bit to invest.

Post by **Hurb** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 7:54 pm

I think that danoguy is a dick, but you can't argue that he knows how to relic a guitar.

benwalker · Post by **benwalker** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 10:47 am

James wrote:He mainly does teles by the looks of it. I think the thing is the vintage strat and tele market is astronomical. The vintage jag and jazz market is fairly reasonable.

There isn't much point putting down $3000 on a relic jazzy when it will buy you a genuine vintage one, but people will do it for a strat when they'd be looking at 10x that amount for an early one.

If you're going to do it you need to ask yourself some serious supply and demand questions. Can you put out a guitar that is made from parts that will be better and cheaper than a competing version. That danocaster guy says he sells around 5 a month, which seems like it would make a tidy side income. He's clearly aiming at the vintage mojo market and doing a better relic job than the companies themselves seem to do, so he has the customers. You'd need to spend a while thinking about target markets, how you're going to get your name and product out there (even if you're just chucking a few on ebay every now and then) and how you're going to elevate yourself above what is already there.

Given the way things are financially, if you have a few grand spare you could easily pick up a few abandoned projects for cheap, finish them up or use the parts to do other things, and sell as complete guitars later on. It's not quite a weekends worth of work type of plan, but there's some definite money in that if you have a bit to invest.

Thoughts. I doubt at the moment any bank is going to hand out a loan to do any of this sort of thing, so would have to wait until gordon brown decides the world has been saved before doing anything like this. plus buying 'nice' parts from the US would have been fine 8 months ago but at the moment, maybe not.

Abandoned projects could be an idea. My first thought was to use fender necks but upgrade everything else, to something that fender currently doesn't offer, but a potential customer would go for. e.g. Gilmour 0001 style strat but with EMGs and warmoth body, a p90 loaded hardtail strat, revisit of the old strat ultra from the early 90's (locking tuners, flame maple capped body etc) - but thinking about the initial cost, especially $ vs Â£, and lack of potential customers in the current financial climate, it may not be worthwhile...

meh. stick to i.t. for the time being.. or start really small before trying anything potentially stupid..

harrisbquinn · Post by **harrisbquinn** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:36 pm

the general rule of thumb with partscasters is that they are worth half of what the cost of parts originally was....ebay can be deceiving...

timhulio · Post by **timhulio** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:43 pm

Yeah I read that somewh... hey waydaminute... you just made that up!

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 9:22 pm

i hate relic'd guitars, why would anyone buy a beat to shit guitar for 3000 when you can buy a replica for half the price?

i dont know about everyone else but unless its vintage i'd like my guitar brand new or used but not relic'd

gaybear · Post by **gaybear** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:05 am

TheDude2112 wrote:i hate relic'd guitars, why would anyone buy a beat to shit guitar for 3000 when you can buy a replica for half the price?

i dont know about everyone else but unless its vintage i'd like my guitar brand new or used but not relic'd

werd
best way to relic something is to play it alot. otherwise it's just kinda dumb.

Mo Law-ka · Post by **Mo Law-ka** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 2:23 am

i remember seeing something on musicians friend a few months ago that had relic guitars for sale, with reduced price in scratch and dent. @_@

gaybear · Post by **gaybear** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:45 pm

Mo Rocca wrote:i remember seeing something on musicians friend a few months ago that had relic guitars for sale, with reduced price in scratch and dent. @_@

hahaha, awesome

deaner33 · Post by **deaner33** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 6:10 pm

Interesting that he is in Nashville & seems to mainly do Teles. Seems like he could get some good word of mouth with the professional musicians there.