DIY TL Style Electric Guitar Kits with Mahogany Body and Maple Neck - Maple Fingerboard and All Components Included (TL)

Arrived SUPER fast, and was very much as it was advertised. I really can't believe that they can put a quality guitar kit together for a little more than it would cost me to just buy the wood. Yes, the body is made up of three pieces of miss matched mahogany so a natural finish is out of the question. This guitar body is paint grade ready when it arrives. The neck is great, the frets are in very well. There are no gaps between the bottom of the fret and the neck, and they are well dressed. I did have to file a couple of frets down, so just a minor fret level job. Everything works great, but I will be changing out the pickups for a much higher quality pair. There is nothing wrong with the stock ones but they are a little shrill for my taste. All in all this is a GREAT kit at AMAZING price.

Not bad quality for a kit. Bought it as I was bored out my skull and at a loose end, assembles well, pretty simple. Took it to pieces again and sprayed it dark blue, looks professional.

I've now built three of the Leo Jaymz kit guitars - the SG style (my first build), the T style (2nd build), and the Explorer (AX) style. Overall, I've hugely enjoyed them and I'm definitely addicted to these things :) The good: - Complete kits, at least for me everything fit together well - Good quality woods. Maybe I just got lucky, but all three of my kits had nice grain, no knots, no issues with the woods. The maple neck on my T style has some quite impressive grain once stained. The AX kit had a small glue stain on the front, but since I was going for a "beat up, reclaimed wood" look, it was no big deal. - Good fret boards - other than polishing the frets and cleaning up 1-2 sharp frets, there was nothing I had to do other than oil the necks. - The price! My wife would tell you it was a relatively cheap way to keep me occupied for weeks :P - The AX guitar had quick connects for the electronics. A welcome surprise! The less good: - The instructions, especially for the SG style, leave a lot to be desired in their clarity. There are definite suggestions on how to make instructions clearer to reduce mistakes. Because of my mistakes on the first guitar, I didn't make any on the 2nd, so that's a plus. The AX style guitar had no instructions at all. So don't do that one first. The subjective: - After the builds, both guitars are quite playable and sound very good. The SG has relatively tame pickups (~9.1k & 9.5k), so hotter than an under-wound PAF, but not super modern either. Sounds very good with some overdrive. I ended up swapping the TL pickups with an aftermarket set since there was a specific sound I was going for. I put an Alpha/Omega set in the Explorer, and they sound epic. I didn't bother checking the output on the stock pickups. - Hardware is all serviceable. If you asked what I would replace, in this order: Tuners, nut, pickups, anything else. That said, both guitars stay in tune just fine. Some lessons learned: - Mock up all the components before you assemble or paint anything. On the SG style guitar, it turns out if you just use the measurements in the instructions, at least on mine, the neck gets glued too close to the pickup for the pickup ring to fit. It also means the intonation is slightly off now that it's all assembled. Similarly, on the T style, the aftermarket bridge pickup was slightly larger than the cavity in the wood. No big deal, i just shaved a couple mms of wood off and now it's a perfect fit. - On both guitars, there's a ground wire that goes to the bridge. Forgetting it on the T style bridge isn't a big deal, since you can just remove the bridge with a few screws. On the SG guitar, you can't remove the bridge screw holes once they are in, so i had to get some conductive adhesive to make the ground wire work. Now that I've built a couple, I will definitely build more. Particularly for guitars in a style of music I don't normally way, it's a great way to get an instrument you like at a good price, and get some good enjoyment along the way. If you are trying to do this to get a PRS 10 top instrument for $200, you'll probably be disappointed. If you are doing this for fun and to come out with a totally great playable instrument, you'll have a lot of fun doing this.

Nice kit, fun to put together. easy to piece together. My only issue is that I had to buy neck shims and shim the neck to get the action to be playable. After a little tinkering I was able to get it. plays nice. The tuning pegs are kinda cheap so you may wanna buy new ones. they stay in tune, but there is issue with the feel quality. nice quality wood. pretty and feels good. I plan to go over it with a super high grit sand paper and a finish oil.

Firstly, I want to say that the build quality and the build experience was exceptional. Had the neck pick up worked this review would have had 5 stars, without question. However, the neck pick up does not work. What I wanted was a replacement pick up, after all the guitar was built, stained, oiled, and beautiful. What I was told was that the only option was to return that built guitar in return for another kit. That is rediculous, the pick up would cost pennies to replace, and I would not have to build another guitar. As it is I have had to buy a new pick up. Rediculous, the thing is of course that the new pick up will upgrade the guitar. I would have replaced the pick ups in a couple of years anyway, just not happy with the seller's response.