Introduction
I received a gift of an S-style guitar kit. This is log of building this kit. Building a guitar is a first and have seldom done any wood working. For me, the electronics side will be the familiar part.
This is done informally, and I hope you can read past the typos! 
The body is in acceptable condition. The body is made of four pieces with the wood grain unmatched. A stained or clear body would not look very good, so a solid black is going to be my goal. The routing of the cavity shapes is poorly done. These will need a bit of cleanup. I have some small concern that the neck bed is not very cleanly cut. This could impact sustain and tuning stability. I do not have the proper tools to correct this, so it will be built as it was shipped to me. Kit was around $80 just before Christmas 2024.
The electronics are mostly assembled. The pieces that need assembly have connectors already soldered to them. The solder is poorly done, so I will improve on that in a few places. Some common good practices were not followed. These are likely low impact, but I have been chasing noise my whole career, and I will make corrections so the noise is liklely to creep in.
I took the time to measure much of the kit before starting to build anything.
Elecrtrical:
pots are 250k Ohms
Tone caps are 47nf, one on mid and one on neck pickups
Coil inductance is really low comapred to my other guitars – all are under 1H. I did check to make sure I had the pots set properly. My single-core guitar runs about 3x this inductance. The magnets appear to be not much more than a flexible fridge magnet.
The wiring does not have the bridge coil connected to the tone. This seems odd to me. The switch seems to connect in a way so the bridge does use the tone control, but this will remove the tone from position 3. Maybe I need to short the switch position 1 and 2 lugs to make it work – will think it thru after assembly and I see if it needs this (pretty sure it does need it and I think I have it thought thru properly).
Neck:
| Parameter | Measurement |
|---|---|
| Wood | Maple |
| Fret Size | Medium Jumbo – frets about 43 mils above fretboard |
| Width at Fret 1 | 1.667 in / 42.3 mm |
| Width at Fret 12 | 2.065 in / 52.4 mm |
| Depth at Fret 1 | 0.866 in / 22.0 mm |
| Depth at Fret 12 | 0.918 in / 23.3 mm |
| Fretboard Radius | 10 in / 25.4 cm |
Nut slot heights (mils):
| String | Nut Height | Expected Fret 1 Action Height |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.105 | 0.062 |
| 2 | 0.110 | 0.067 |
| 3 | 0.115 | 0.072 |
| 4 | 0.115 | 0.072 |
| 5 | 0.105 | 0.062 |
| 6 | 0.095 | 0.052 |
Some frets are a little high when checked with a fret rocker. It is much better than I expected for this caliber of kit. Many of the high spots may be corrected with a soft mallet. The slots are hard to measure because it is hard to see the measuring mark. If my measurements are accurate, then the slot will need a little adjustment so all the slots are more uniformly above the fretboard. This is really going to be measured against the frets once the assembly is done, but fret heights are varying about 7 mils. Add the 20 mils variance in the slot and we have a lot of difference across fret 1. It will be interesting to see how poorly I measured this.
Nut slot files are very expensive and not something to go buy unless building becomes a regular thing.
, maybe its an ugly guitar with bad sound.
…I’d like to build a guitar someday…an amplifier is really over my head and I’m afraid I’ll burn the house down 
…
and I didn’t know Jason had built anything Sorry Jason I will find it and check it out I am still tired from the long weekend 
That really makes me feel good has made my morning.
just dont let you wife catch you. You just have to take your time. Expensive tools are fun but not always needed.
cold-ish and dry. The Boiled linseed application is not drying very fast. I may want to wait for a couple weeks on the body until is warms up again.
