Kit Guitars

*updated February 13, 2024

I have talked briefly about some kit guitars before in the individual kit guitar build pages and now that I have made a few, I would like to do a single article about them.

First, I’ll talk about the acoustic guitars from Solo Music Gear. They do have steel string acoustic kits as well as classical guitars kits. I had purchased two of the classical guitars in hopes of “getting a feel” for building guitars before I went to my course. It’s really not the same – these kits pretty much require you to sand and finish the guitar body and neck, glue the bridge and neck on (if you decide to actually glue the neck) and install the hardware.

Despite the simplicity of the build, it’s actually a decent sounding classical guitar. The fret comes leveled and crowned so there is really not much left for you to do after you string it up.

The Martin and Hosco guitar kits on Solo require more work to build. It’s actually almost like building a guitar from scratch – it looks as though the pieces of wood are cut close to size leaving you with the final trimming.

Electric Guitars

As for the electric guitars, there would be more options – of course. There are many different body styles and you can get bolt on necks to set neck guitars. Some guitars even have solderless electronics.

The first kit I purchased was the Bex Gear SG kit – I was looking to buy an SG style body guitar and was deciding on a cheap Epiphone SG as the price point was pretty much the same. I would have purchased the kit from Solo as there are a lot of good reviews on the kit guitars but at the time, they didn’t have stock for the kit I wanted. In the end, they didn’t manage to get stock for that kit for a number of months.

Similarly like the acoustic guitar kits, these don’t require you to do much to finish the guitar – sand, paint and install the hardware. The electric guitar kits do come in a variety of woods – something like Mahogany or Ash would be ideal but that depends on what is available for a kit and what you prefer for your tonewoods.

Regardless of which brand of kit guitar I purchased, there were issues with the pre-drilled holes – some brands more than others. The Bex Gear guitar was the worst – most of the holes were off. I think the holes to bolt on the neck were the only holes that were correct. You had to drill new holes for the pick up rings and the holes for the ferules for the bridge were too close together.

The best was the Solo kit. There may have been only a couple of holes that were a little off but nothing crazy like the Bex Gear kit.

The kits from GTS guitars (diyguitarkits.net) actually require you to drill your own holes for the certain things – the bolt on neck holes are the only ones I remember at this point. It’s a good change from the rest of them where it is all done for you.

Going back to the GTS guitar recently, I have noticed that the neck had some back bow and tried to adjust the truss rod. It would not straighten out enough.

*previously, I played the guitars sitting down without a strap because I was just testing them. Upon playing the guitars with a strap on, I realized that all the electric guitar kits were head heavy even though the bodies have decent weight to them. With that, the longer I played, the more my hand strained just to hold the guitar up and try to fret the chords.

Tuning

Just recently, Jason from the Sensational Hot Rods was trying out one of the GTS guitars and said that the intonation was off as he was playing some chords. It got me thinking because I had a lot of issues with the Bex Gear guitar for intonation.

With a few of the kit guitars that I still have here, I went to check them all on intonation. * a Polytune 3 pedal tuner was used to check tuning.

The Bex Gear guitar was borked as ever – the octave is off on some of the strings (even with the saddle maxed out) and most if not all the strings were pretty off just playing on fret one. I’m not talking about 1 stick on the tuner – it was about 4 or 5 sticks. On all strings, the tuning got better as you went up the neck.

The GTS and Solo guitar were good for the octave intonation. Strings 1-5 were pretty close as you went up the frets but both were off on string 6 from frets 1 to about fret 5. This is because the string height at the nut has to be adjusted

Hardware

The hardware on kit guitars are pretty poor – and it should be expected as it’s price point.

The tuning machines are not smooth at all: these would be something to change out for sure if you wanted the guitar to be something you play on a regular basis. Even better if you go with locking tuners.

I have found the pick ups to be hit or miss on sound – not necessarily the greatest (at best) but again, think of the price point. These would be something you would want to upgrade as well – an electric guitar’s sound is pretty much 80% on the pick ups.

Anything else you would decide to upgrade would be up to you – the tuning machines for sure but beyond that you would have to start asking yourself if it was even worth buying a kit guitar to begin with. I personally don’t have an entry level guitar from a brand name company to really compare the two but I would imagine they would still be better.

I do know that the Ibanez Gios and Jackson Dinky guitars are rated pretty well for entry level guitars. I have personally been a fan of Schecter guitars for about 20 years now and I do know they have an entry line of guitars but I don’t know how they are.

Besides the hardware, there also the matter of finishing the body and possibly the neck. These are other costs that would go into the guitar unless you have sand paper and other tools and materials already. Sure, you can buy a couple cans of spray paint but it’s tricky to get a good, even coat with a spray can. A finish of some sort. Sand paper…it’s going to add up before you even get to putting the guitar together.

I would say that a kit guitar is for somebody to say they “made” a guitar or actually, they are also great to practice working on guitars.

The acoustics – you can take the neck, bridge or soundboard off.

The electric – you can practice soldering, modding the guitar in different ways.

Both – taking off the fingerboard, taking off/replacing frets, practice on fret work, strip the paint and refnish it.