So I had been planning this for a long time. I established a timeline for myself to gradually work my way into building some specific guitars. The first steps were the First Act guitars that I repaired, re-finished, and modded. Those were practice for building kits. There are two kits in particular which I really want to build and make quite nice guitars, but I wanted to practice a full kit build on something cheaper first, which I decided would be a Telecaster. Two reasons for this: one, its a style of guitar that I don’t own, and two, tele kits are the second cheapest on ebay. The cheapest are strat kits, usually for around 70 with free shipping, but I already have multiple strats. I paid 79 for my tele kit with free shipping from a Tomtop ebay seller. Note that the prices on these kits fluctuate based on availability. Two weeks before I purchased there were only a couple sellers with the tele kits, going for about $90. One week before I purchased there were dozens of sellers with the same kits for $69 and up, but I had to wait to get paid. By the time I made my purchase there were fewer sellers and $79 was the cheapest price.
It arrived a week before the estimated arrival time, which was cool.
I knew the kit was a no binding slab body with rosewood fretboard and a white pick-guard, so I searched the interwebs for telecasters that matched that description to get an idea what I wanted mine to look like. This picture provided the inspiration for my build.
There was no visible branding anywhere on the box or the “instructions” that came with it. I think its Ammoon. I was pretty satisfied with the body, it has a nice weight to it, and nice clean routing. Importantly, no screw holes were pre drilled for the pickguard, bridge, neck or control plate. That is all left up to the builder. Mine unfortunately had a couple pretty bad dents on the top, nickel sized, covered by the foam sheet in the picture. Probably happened during shipping. If I had been wanting to stain the top and do a wood grain finish this would have been a deal breaker, but luckily I always intended to paint this project a solid color, so I wasn’t even slightly worried about the dents.
While I was happy enough with the body, the neck clearly would require a lot more work. The frets were visibly uneven, with sharp edges.
I mocked everything together to get an idea how everything fit. The pickguard was poorly cut out for the neck, and required a little bit of alteration to go around the neck on one side, while it doesn’t touch the neck on the other side. Thats mostly hidden by the fretboard however. The electronics are the cheap Chinese sort, nothing remarkable.
As a general rule, this kit may not be the best choice for a first time builder, as it requires drilling all the holes yourself. A mistake here could place the bridge offline with the neck, or in the wrong spot for the scale length, and render the guitar basically unplayable. I measured three times for every mark I made, then double checked before drilling. To get the bridge location I fit the neck in the pocket and measured carefully from the nut slot to the 12th fret, then from the 12th fret to the bridge saddles. I laid a straight edge on either side of the neck and drew lines to center the bridge. Luckily the neck pocket is nice and snug so the neck doesn't have any play that could cause it to be crooked later on.
I also marked the holes for the neck, and while I was at it, I penciled out my headstock design using the original neck I shaped. That other neck is from a spectrum strat project. I messed up the body on that guitar and it is currently awaiting me finding a good deal on a new body or figure out how to fix the original.
I went ahead and filled the dents I mentioned with plastic wood. This stuff is fantastic for dents and dings in wood.
Once the filler dried I sanded it smooth to the body. I then drilled all the holes I had marked out. I was careful to use bits smaller than the shaft of the screws that would be going in the holes, and drilled only as deep as needed. I used only a hand drill. I don’t have easy access to a drill press, but I have plenty of experience drilling by hand, and I was confident that I could be precise enough for the build.
Once the holes for the neck were drilled in the body, I fitted the neck in, clamped it, double checked the neck alignment and scale length one last time, then marked the screw holes on the neck and drilled them.
Al that work done, the guitar was fully ready to be assembled, which is exactly what I did. It was important to ensure that all my measurements were correct, and that I would be able to create a working guitar at the end. It would be a shame to go through the finishing process only to find that a mistake or manufacturing error made the end product unplayable. To be honest, it was pretty unplayable at this point. The tuners are not lined up on the nut straight on, so the strings pulled the nut to the side a bit. I wasn’t going to glue the nut in for this mock up, but that would definitely be necessary for the final product.
Without any setup the action was quite low, too low for the uneven frets, it was completely unplayable due to fret buzz and fret outs. Open chords worked fine though so I could still test the electronics. Knowing I was going to cut them off right away I strung it up with the horrible strings that came with the kit. With crap strings I knew I wasn’t going to get a clear idea of how the pickups will sound, but I did verify that they worked and figured out how the wire the switch properly. For the mockup I had the bridge and neck pickups backwards.
With the mock up complete I took everything down and got ready to start on the finishing process.
The first step for the body was to grain fill. I used timbermate water based wood filler, watered down to a thin consistancy. I spread it thinly across the body and worked it into the grain by hand.
Once the grain filler dried I power sanded it with 220, and hand sanded with 500.
Because I knew I was painting with a solid finish, I decided to test some watercolor inks and try to get some practice with staining. I want to do a stain on my next project. I wasn’t super happy with the results, so I don’t know if I’ll try to use these inks for said future project. The wet stain raised the grain a bit so I had to grain fill the back again and sand again. I should have taken this as a warning, but I didn't.
I sprayed primer first, I emptied a can of Rustoleum 2x Primer over about four coats, then left to dry for two days.
I power sanded the primer with 220, then cleaned off the body and sprayed the color. I sprayed the whole can, again a Rustoleum 2x product. It took six to eight coats I think, over three days. I made a couple mistakes on the first coat and had to wait for it to dry so I could sand it back and ensure I had a smooth surface for the rest of the paint. After the final coat I left to dry for several days to ensure all the solvent evaporated out. I was spraying Polyurethane clear coat so I wanted to make sure there was no chance of an issue with the paint under it.
For clear I used Minwax fast drying spray polyurethane. Based on the instructions on the can, which stated to re-coat within two hours or wait 72 hours and sand to recoat, I sprayed the entire can over the course of an afternoon, about 8-9 coats I think. This spray can is definitely a higher end product than the rust-oleum clear coats. The spray nozzle works like a spray gun, providing a vertical pattern and very fine mist. Its much easier to control and avoid runs and sags.
I didn’t really take a lot of pictures of the finishing process. Probably because its one of my least favorite parts of the build. I wet sanded with 1000 grit sandpaper till the poly finish was smooth, then wet sanded with 2000 grit before moving to Meguiars 205 with polishing disc in my power drill. I did sand through the finish just a tiny bit on one corner, but it wasn’t particularly noticeable, so I decided not to re-finish the whole guitar over it, which would be the only way to fix it. Unfortunately, I learned another hard lesson here. The water from my wet-sanding got inside the screw holes, and in a couple places, particularly the neck screw holes on the back, it caused swelling in the wood under the finish, leaving visible bubbling around the screw holes. I had only ever done re-finish paint jobs before, so I didn't anticipate this. Fortunately, the neck plate on the back, and the pick guard on the front mostly cover these imperfections, but not completely. In the future I'll either need to seal the wood thoroughly, or use dry micromesh instead of wet sanding. At any rate, with the polishing disc in my drill I was able to get the finish fairly shiny, not quite mirror shine like a factory guitar, but still passable I think.
In between days working on the body, I worked on the neck. I cut out the marked headstock shape with a jigsaw, leaving it a little large. Then I finished shaping the headstock with wood files, and sanded the edges smooth.
I applied four coats of tung oil to the neck and headstock over the course of several days. I also applied one coat to the fretboard. I chose tung oil because I wanted a “bare wood” finish on the neck, and Tung oil is really good for that. It also tints the wood just a little bit, and gives it a bit of shine so it looks great.
I then leveled, crowned, dressed, and polished the frets. This is a pretty tedious task, particularly because I have no crowning tool, and do all my crowning and dressing by hand with flat needle files. Its painstaking work to get a good crown this way without damaging the fretboard. The needle files can wear through the tape used to protect the fretboard if I am not careful. I do usually wind up with at least a few small scratches. None on this project ended up being too noticeable.
These frets were a lot of work. All the other fret jobs I have done have been on guitars that had at least some work done at the factory, or had been played enough that the fret ends were smoothed over and not too sharp. These were just slammed in the neck and left to the builder to finish. I put a lot of effort into dressing the edges to play comfortable, as well as making sure the frets got leveled crowned and polished.
With the body and neck complete, I started assembly. It took very little time to solder up the electronics and assemble the body. The kit came with the pick guard, control plate, and bridge already pre-wired, so the only solder joints are at the switch,ground, and jack.
I then attached the neck and started working on the nut. Pay no attention to the cat who came to inspect my work. She loves to play with guitar strings so whenever I string a guitar I have to lock her out.
I had purchased a graph tech tusq nut for this guitar. However, the nut slot was cut way too deep for that nut, so I was forced to glue some thin strips of card into the nut slot as spacers to raise the tusq nut to an acceptable level.
Despite that added hassle, I was able to string up the guitar, and spot and attach the string trees. I used the other neck to help me identify the right spots for the string trees. The setup work went fairly smoothly, although the large saddles make intonation slightly imperfect, they are really easy to adjust for action and intonation. With my spacer in the slot the nut action was passable. I elected not the file the nut slots for super low nut action just in case it compressed the spacer lower over time.
With that done I was finally able to play my finished product. This was a fantastic learning experience, and a lot of fun, getting a fun guitar at the end is like icing on the cake. Thanks to my hard work on the frets this guitar feels like much more than it is. The fret ends are smooth and comfortable, and the action is set perfectly low for my tastes with no real fret buzz issues. In terms of playability it does not feel like a $70 instrument, more like something much more expensive. However, the stock pickups do leave something to be desired. They are ok; there are some tones I like, and they definitely have that “tele” sound, but they lack clarity and the bridge picks up a lot of noise. As far as hardware goes, I have not had problems with the tuners yet, they do their job as well as any decent affordable guitar tuners. The bridge has a little bit of a string spacing issue, but it doesn’t have a noticeable affect on playability to me.
So in conclusion, I certainly feel like I got my money’s worth. It was a great experience building the kit, and the end result is very playable. The finish and sound are not the greatest, but they are quite passable and as-is the tele definitely offers some tones that none of my other guitars have. Plus I could easily replace the pickups down the road and make it sound as great as it plays, which would leave the only not-amazing thing as the finish. The faults in the finish are my own, and can’t be blamed on the kit. I am attempting pretty advanced painting with little experience and only spray cans. Taking that into consideration I think the finish is pretty good. I am still experimenting with the best paints and clear coat for rattle-can finishes. The minwax spray polyurethane was better to work with than the rust-oleum clear coats, but its still a little soft and can be dented by a fingernail with enough pressure. which is part of the reason I think I couldn’t get a mirror gloss.
This will definitely not be the last guitar kit I build. I have my eye on a couple others, I just need to save up the funds for the next kit and the supplies to build and finish it.
For anyone interesting in kit building, I highly recommend it. It is a lot of work, but its a lot of fun, and in the end you have a guitar thats entirely your own. There are some skills needed, especially for a kit like this where no holes are pre-drilled. For that situation you need a working understanding how how a guitar functions, and thus how to place the bridge and neck properly.
You do need to learn some basic soldering, I do all my soldering with a $15 low heat iron from home depot. But I also have training and experience in soldering and I can make that work just fine. If you don't you're better off spending a little more money to get a decent iron that gets a little hotter. Realistically most guitar tinkerers know how to solder.
A little basic woodworking knowledge is a big help in prep sanding, as well as allowing you to shape the headstock if you get a paddle headstock like this kit.
Perhaps most important with these kits is knowing how to do work on frets and nuts and setup. The factory just sets the frets in and sends a molded plastic nut. Even a cheap Squier or Epiphone guitar has at least some minimal fretwork and nut setup done at the factory. Kits like this will always need extensive work to become playable guitars. To me doing that work is a large part of the enjoyment because it makes the instrument your own and you can really feel the difference your work makes when you play it. This work doesn't require a lot of expensive tools either, though most videos you watch on you tube will suggest that. All the tools that I use I owned already, or obtained cheaply from regular hardware stores and harbor freight. It does take a little practice to master fret crowning by hand with needle files, but the alternative is a $100 tool from stew mac. For learning about simple DIY fret leveling I highly recommend the "Guns & Guitars" channel on you tube.
Finishing skill is actually not required, although the appearance of the end product depends on it. You could simply sand everything smooth and throw some tung oil or other finishing oil on. Or you could use a stain. I honestly chose the most difficult finish, doing a good solid color with clear coat is far more difficult than a stain and some oil. This is my fourth solid finish and its still not great. If you want to build a kit but don't want the hassle that comes with paints or spray clear coats its very easy to pick a good looking finish that is much easier to apply with no experience.
If anybody actually takes the time to read all this, hope you enjoyed reading about my first kit build. Hope it inspires somebody to give it a go. Rock on folks.
Thanks, interesting info.
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