I have had dozens of inquiries come in on another site asking me about the quality of this kit and that kit and where can I get a good cheap Les Paul Kit… Why me?
So… Rather than disappointing those readers I have decided to move all of this kind of blogging from my other unrelated site to here.
eBay Unfinished Guitars
Les Paul Kit Review
Song Chung Musical Instrument Co. ltd (song_hui_chao@hotmail.com) DBA eBay Store: music.song
(http://stores.ebay.com/songhuichao0086) Item Description: “high quality Unfinished electric guitar body with neck” Starting bid:US $69.99 Shipping:$59.90 Economy Shipping
This kit seems to be available from several other eBay stores… All sellers based in China. They are using the very same images to advertise all of their products,
On the plus side I can tell you the shipping is amazingly fast but any good news ends there…
The body of this Unfinished guitar is actually made up of at least 5 pieces of varied grades of “mahogany”. The top is made up of at least 4 pieces (possibly more) of a light wood that may or may not be maple and covered with a veneer that is less than 2mm thick… Wait… It gets better. The workmanship is like nothing I’ve ever seen, I will not even bother to build this kit.
The veneer covering this top is very thin (less than 2mm) and has been sanded through in several spots there are also imperfections and splits throughout:
The binding has been sanded to paper thin in the cut out and the routing for the binding has multiple tear outs. The binding also doesn’t quite meet the veneer over 50% of the seam all the way around:
The Neck may very well be hollow and has the addition of a piece at the heel, the tenon would require a lot of work to fit the pocket at all but I’m just not doing it because it isn’t worth the time…
Basically… The fret work sucks… And then take a look at the inlays…
For the cost I didn’t expect much but honestly… I expected better than this. This “Unfinished Guitar” is of such low quality in both materiel and craftsmanship that it would never be worth the time to finish it… No matter what is done to it it could not even be made into a mediocre musical instrument… Just junk.