Strip the finish?

[deg0ey]

Ok, well I'm mainly looking to get it as cheap as I can (being a student and all that) but I suppose the finish is probably not the place to cut back

[Bird]

the price warmoth are charging is good because there finish will be of a very high standard.


you can probably get good results doing it youself if you read up on it and practice on scr@p but its still unlikely to be as good as warmoths

Too bad Warmoth don't have the nitro option. It just ages nicely

[Transcend]

well as to painting location experience etc my brother is a proffesional vehicle sprayer so itll be all fine on that front.... also helps me to get it done for free :D

[deg0ey]

One more question - I'm gonna get rear routing for my warmoth body, and I wanted to know whether I need pickup rings or not - I'm not entirely sure when they're supposed to be used, and whether they'd be necessary on this as I have covered pickups (does that even make a difference?)

[Philly Q]

One more question - I'm gonna get rear routing for my warmoth body, and I wanted to know whether I need pickup rings or not - I'm not entirely sure when they're supposed to be used, and whether they'd be necessary on this as I have covered pickups (does that even make a difference?)

Up to you, really - if you don't have pickup rings you'll have to screw the pickups directly to the body.  One school of thought is that this improves the tone because the pickups vibrate with the wood; with rings, the springs act as a sort of suspension system to (partially) isolate the pickups from the body's resonance.  Of course if you have direct mounting with springs or foam under the pickups to adjust the height it negates most of the resonance thing anyway.
Covered pickups make no difference to the direct mount/ring mount question, although if you went for direct mounting I suppose the covers would protect the exposed parts of the pickup.

Personally (FWIW) I prefer mounting rings, because it's easier to adjust the height and they just look tidier.

[WezV]

you can screw them direct to the body with foam underneath.

Personally i like humbuckers with rings around them and singlecoils direct mounted but on some guitars a neck humbucker looks a little bulky (like if its with a tele bridge) witha ring around it so i prefer to direct mount.  

Some people claim there are tonal benefits to direct mounting because the pickup isnt isolated from the bodies vibration like it is when mounted to a ring with a spring inbetween.  but for some styles the pickup performs better for being isolated from those vibrations