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DIY kits?
- Thread starter Gobnous Gretch
- Start date
Pitbull Guitars used to sell a kit in that exact "Unique Shape", and they can still be had on Aliexpress, but Pitbull presumably received a Nastygram from certain litigious parties that made Retreat the better part of valor for Pitbull. The Gun's & Guitars YT guy built a couple with.... meh.... results. Like almost all kits, the supplied hardware and electronics were junk. If you really want a Ric Shaped Object, you can buy them all day long on Aliexpress, and you'll get what you paid for: not much.
Cave Puppy
"Humph Bo, he's wond!" - John Lennon
I've built several basses/guitars from kits. By and large they are mostly unmitigated piles of crap and almost always need at least electronics upgrades. You definitely get what you pay for. The Carvin 5 string kit is very high quality. The worst was an SG bass kit from Pitbull in Australia. WOW what a POS. Darn near everything on that kit was messed up. My tele kit from another vendor needed a new neck, new electronics but turned out pretty good. If you want something to do as a project go for it. If you think you will build a better quality instrument than one you can buy for the same price as a kit, think again, unless of course you build guitars anyway. If you want to try something different a kit may be a way to go. But kits are time, money, and energy suckers. I probably won't be building another one.
I haven't seen an actual good kit, but I'm certain they're out there somewhere. Just not cheap. Grabbed a guitar kit from a place out in CA a couple years ago for $160 figuring, how bad could it be? Total junk, nothing salvageable. Even the Paulownia body cracked after about 8 months literally sitting on a guitar stand in my living room. Neck never did 'come around' either, wasn't even good for fretwork practice.
So I started collecting decent to good, but abused or neglected guitar and bass parts and that began working out a lot better.
Also things don't really just fit, so you have to be ready to modify parts.
Also- also, fretwork and set up are everything! Pickup a few Squiers and practice.
Last winter and spring I gathered up some much better stuff and assembled and set up a couple fun things.
So I started collecting decent to good, but abused or neglected guitar and bass parts and that began working out a lot better.
Also things don't really just fit, so you have to be ready to modify parts.
Also- also, fretwork and set up are everything! Pickup a few Squiers and practice.
Last winter and spring I gathered up some much better stuff and assembled and set up a couple fun things.
Unfortunately Kiesel have discontinued their kits and most or all of their parts sales. I considered building a bass kit from Carvin many times over the years and was only held back by the lack of a P-bass nut width option.
Disappointing since IIRC, the price difference was almost half, the parts were very well done, and the hardware included a hipshot bridge! It really was the best quality bass kit you could get for the price.
This.
I’ve done a couple kits with friends. They are fun, and I have even used a couple basses for some regular gigging back in college. That said, I left one bass at my parent's home after graduating college, and after a couple years it became a hunting bow. I can’t say the necks are the sturdiest things out there, but they are enjoyable projects.
The Fender route is what I've done. I have built (put together) four fretless and one fretted bass. Plus I have two more on the back burner. Only one has stock electronics and bridge. The only thing stock about the rest are the bodies. Boy did I learn a lot! Next I want to do a steam punk build...
Well, yes and no.
Warmoth parts are high quality and high price. Assembling finished Warmoth parts is pretty close to building a kit bass but it is much more than an novelty. You end up with a USA made bass equal in quality to a typical $1500+ offering but at a price that is below that.
I did that. The 3-pickup jazz that has been my main player for about 7 years is a Warmoth parts bass. I got the body (I had Warmoth custom-route the three pickup holes), shielded it, mounted the pickups and the bridge, then sent it off to Turnstyle Switch to have some custom electronics done. When I got it back, I took the body, neck, tuners, string retainer, and strap locks to Mike Lull and had his shop assemble it, set it up and PLEK it. The first time I ever had it in my hands as a completed bass, it was perfect. I could actually play faster on it than I ever could before. (I credit the smooth hardness of the bubinga neck and the perfection of the frets and setup.)
It was money well spent, and it's something I plan to do again.
My guitar player built his own guitar.
But he ended up buying a new (better) neck, better pickups, and put a Bigsby on it - so in the end it he probably could have just bought a body and all those parts separately.
But he ended up buying a new (better) neck, better pickups, and put a Bigsby on it - so in the end it he probably could have just bought a body and all those parts separately.
Another benefit of DIY builds (both kits and parts): after putting it together, being able (/ having) to properly set up a bass yourself (from scratch) is a pretty useful skill to have learned - or to have failed on if it didn't go so well 
You can use it for other basses and/or do a resetup if it drifts over time without needing others to do it for you.
After the kit build, I was able to do a better setup of my other basses as well.
You can use it for other basses and/or do a resetup if it drifts over time without needing others to do it for you.
After the kit build, I was able to do a better setup of my other basses as well.
Actually a complete Warmoth kit including the hardware & electronics can easily cost $1500. But the quality is there.
While true, that isn't exactly a kit.
Well, it's a kit you selected yourself, not a kit in the traditional sense of a company offering a standard set of parts.
Nor is it a true kit where all you have to do is assemble pieces. You will have holes to drill and perhaps some machining on the pickguard if you want truss rod access.
If you're trying to build a bass on the cheap, a kit isn't the way to go. However, if you want to make a custom/one off bass (you want things that don't come off the assembly line in the way of woods, etc), then it can sorta be the way to go. I say sorta, because Warmoth wood parts and Hipshot hardware don't come with instructions like a "real" kit does. A kit may be a good entry point (gateway drug?), though, if you want to start building your own basses - best to make your mistakes on a $200 kit, and not on a $400 neck.
I agree it's crazy to buy a kit that's more expensive than a functioning new bass, so I just bought a Glarry Gjazz 5 for $125 and am going to partially deconstruct it and let my 15 year-old son put it back together. I'm all thumbs, so it needs to be fool-proof. And luckily I know the best bass builder in town, so we can go in for pointers and real tools. He's really growing fast in his playing, so if he enjoys and does well with this, then we might take on a real build with higher end kit project.
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My kit arrived today. To quote Dickens, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Some parts are much better than I expected but there are a couple of very bad stupid mistakes that could have been easily avoided that I'm going to have to come up with creative solutions for. I bought the kit because I wanted to learn some of these things so I'm not going to send it back even though I easily could I'm going to figure it out. Once I get far enough along with it to be worthwhile I'll give it its own thread.
