NGD - Sort of

Mark1960 · January 2020

Last summer my son (who's at Uni) and I purchased a guitar kit from Gear4music, with a view to building it together as a joint project. We both play in a band, and so a spare guitar would also come in handy, and it was a good oppertunity for me to pass on some DIY skills to him in a fun way. The kit duly arrived, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of the parts.

I paid extra for an Alder body because I wanted to have a natural wood finish, and the body was made in three pieces, but once sanded down and varnished you can hardly tell, due to good matching, and a great grain structure in the wood. The neck was adequate, but needed most work, particularly on the frets to get them smooth and to feel nice when playing, and I also had a new nut fitted by our local guitar tech, as the one supplied was very poor.

I applied 10 coats of thin (50/50 varnish / white spirit) to the body with a very light sand down with 300 grit flour paper between coats, and 4 coats on the neck and head (the head had to be shaped as it came as a rectangular slab!

One evening over Christmas we assembled the guitar, fitted the supplied strings (short term option as the nut will need finising off), and did a full set up. The guitar was pretty well ready to play once the neck releif had been sorted, and the intonation (which TBH was not that far out) was checked and corrected. Once set up we plugged it in and to my astonishment it sounded really good. A full mellow tone across all three pickups (excet the bridge), and was also surprisingly pleasant to play. We had budgeted for replacing some or all of the pickups, but this was not at all necessary, as the sound was very good. Overall a most enjoyable project, with a very decent sounding playable guitar at the end all for under £100.00!

For those you you who have always fancied it but never got around to it, my advice would be to get wise, and get yourself a guitar kit and get building.