Greetings from British Columbia

[Simon Barden]

Hi CGG and welcome.

[CascadiaGuitarGeek]

Those builds were also very good learning experiences. For the LP I learned that bargain basement prices on kits have their risks. The fretwork on the neck was terrible so as a result I had to figure out how to do a fret level. For the tele I learned about some of the quirks of assembling a guitar from parts that haven't necessarily been designed to fit together. I used a 22 fret neck but the body was routed for the standard 21 frets so I ended up carving out some of the neck pickup ring to fit under the fretboard. Guitarfetish also messed up and sent me a bridge pickup with no cover so I had to change the pole pieces to gold and install a cover on it. Also learned that it is really frustrating to try and install a traditional tele jack cup assembly without the specialty tool from StewMac. So I ended up going with an Electrosocket.

[Simon Barden]

There should be a few more warnings that come with kit guitars. They certainly aren't a finished article where all you do is bolt or glue the neck on, fit the hardware and fit the strings and away you go. They are very much a work in progress and on all of them, the neck is going to need some attention, even if it's just polishing the frets. But most would benefit from a fret levelling, fret re-profiling and polishing, and having the nut slots deepened.

Those Electrosockets are good. A lot more reliable than the standard jack cup.

[CascadiaGuitarGeek]

They are very much a work in progress and on all of them, the neck is going to need some attention, even if it's just polishing the frets. But most would benefit from a fret levelling, fret re-profiling and polishing, and having the nut slots deepened.

Absolutely. At least I now know how to do it and have all the tools to do the job properly. Luckily my second LP kit (for the Iron Cross replica) looks to have a much better neck to start with so that should save me some grief.