Which DIY guitar kit did I buy and which supplier did I buy from?
The funny thing is that while plenty of people warn you off from thinking that making your own guitar is some kind of cheap alternative to buying a great guitar, that was never my starting point anyway. Look, let’s be realistic. I know that factory-made guitars coming out of Korea, Brazil or China, produced in the millions to consistent standards are going to be great quality at unbeatable prices. Fact. So if you’re thinking you want to build your own guitar to save money, forget it.
If, on the other hand, you’re thinking of building your own guitar because you love guitars, because you love playing them and you’d love to learn about them AND end up with something on your wall that you made yourself and will continue to enjoy for years to come, then you’re starting from the right place if you ask me.
I don’t quite know when the idea became a reality for me. I know that a few years ago, after watching a TV programme about the guy who made guitars for Mark Knopfler, I started to have a dream about an ideal life in which I’d have my own workshop and spend my next 20 years (if I’m lucky) working with wood and making lovely instruments. Yeah yeah. Everyone who likes guitars has had that dream at some point. And, realistically, I knew that making guitars required the kinds of tools and precision I just didn’t have.
Recently, however, and quite by accident, I came across guitar kits on Amazon. Guitar kits with all the parts supplied and all the really difficult stuff already done! I hadn’t even thought about this option. But for the money being asked this started to look like a win-win. Even if I put it together without painting it or doing any kind of finish I’d still have a playable guitar and the pleasure of assembling it for what, £120? Bargain!
Exploring Amazon further it was clear that there was quite a large number of suppliers of these DIY guitar kits too – Stellah, Rocktile and plenty of others. It’s very difficult to know what any of these ‘organisations’ looks like and it’s hard to know which kits are quality and which are junk. Maybe they’re all junk. Who knows? And how can you tell?
Stellah kits seem to have the most feedback attached to them (always a good start point even if we know that feedback could be faked!) so worth a read. People seemed to be pretty pleased in general with their kits. Closer look at all the different kits gives the impression that they’re probably all from the same kinds of Chinese suppliers – but there are some pretty big price differences. You can start as low as £75 or go up to about £225 for what looks like the same basic guitar.
You can also turn to YouTube and do a search for “DIY guitar kits” and see dozens of young fellows making their own axes from DIY kits that look very much like the ones you just saw on Amazon. The problem is that they almost certainly won’t be the same ‘brand’ as the ones being currently sold via Amazon.
Nevertheless, I wanted to see what one of these things might look like built. Being a bit of a Photoshop geek I cut out all the little component pieces from one of the kit pictures on Amazon and, painstakingly, put them all together to make a completed virtual guitar. Very sad, I know. But one thing was certain: this was proof that I was already sold on the idea. I just didn’t feel confident just ordering from Amazon with only the single low-res picture for each kit to make my judgment by. Big mistake, sellers.
So I took another tack: I searched for a UK-based DIY guitar kit supplier. Why? Because I wanted someone I could get hold of; someone who would speak my UK English language and, ideally, someone with a real physical location in a country that I know. A bonus would be someone with a good Facebook page that would show me some examples of the kits being built by customers. Those criteria were met by http://www.diyguitarshop.co.uk with a Faceboook page.
This guy has a range of basic shape DIY kits (Stratocaster, Les Paul, SG, LP Junior) in a few different kinds of woods. The prices were all between £120 and about £200 – not cheap at all by Amazon standards – but because he’d ticked all my other boxes AND because some of the guitars made by other customers looked pretty good on his Facebook page, the confidence-0-meter was rising.
So I settled for the Gibson SG shape in mahogany. Nice. The high-ish resolution picture gave me more than enough detail to reassure me that the body and the component parts all looked like good quality. He’d even gone to the trouble to lay the components on the unfinished body and neck to give me a sense of what it would look like finished. Smart seller.
All in all, the SG DIY guitar kit was about £123 + £10 delivery. Why did I choose the SG? Because it was the cheapest in his range, because I’d never played one and because my stepson had casually suggested I should get one. Oh, and because I quite like the rock and roll-ness of it as well. So, without me having to twist any arms or make impossible promises, my missus (who could see this would give me a couple of months of pleasure) gave me the nod and, armed with debit card, I dived into the deep waters of DIY guitar building.
Woo-hoo. I was off, no turning back now.
Got right:
Got wrong:
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