ZEFF DIY Electric Bass Guitar Kits, Basswood Body, Maple Neck and Rosewood Fingerboard, Right, H Pickups, All Accessories Included, Adjustable

I've always wanted to build my own guitar. I wanted to see just how good I could make a cheap kit guitar sound with the components that come in the kit, and not changing too much unless absolutely necessary. The bass wood body does not take stain very well and will look atrocious. I used a very very light pecan stain and finished with several layers of cleay lacquer, buffing with 0000 steel wool in between coats, and got a soft shine finish. I finished the neck with Birchwood Casey gun stock finish. The tuners were better than I expected and were very smooth. The neck was straight but i did have to get a set of neck shims to get the neck angle correct. Two frets near the base of the neck were a little high and a few light taps with a small hammer and a wooden dowel rod fixed that. The pickups sound good for a kit guitar, but i played it next to my Fender Telecaster, it sounded very trebely and tinny in comparison. But it did indeed have that Telecaster "twang". Adjusting the tone knob mellows it out a bit. I also changed the bridge saddles to compensated brass saddles which were slightly wider, and had to be filed down on both ends of the middle saddle, and the inner end of the outer saddles to keep the geomety correct and keep the strings in line with the string holes of the bridge. The brass saddles helped mellow the sound a tiny bit and got rid of the buzzing in the bridge. The control switch pots are smooth but are smaller than standard 250 Fender pots. The nut height was too high and the string spacing too close by about .010 inches. I carefully removed the nut a replaced it with a genuine Fender Telecaster nut. Now it almost feels like my Fender Tele when I play it. I also changed the 1-ply pickguard for a 3-ply tortoise pick guard. The shape was good but most of the screw holes did not match. I just put the screws in and didn't worry since the original holes are covered by the pick guard. I did not use the strings that came with it, but used Fender pure nickel 150 instead.It did not come with any instructions at all and I had to find instructions online for a similar Tele-clone kit that had the same type of selector switch to get all the soldered wire connections correct.Here's my final thoughts on this kit Telecaster:Does it sound as good as a Fender Telecaster? Not a chanceDoes it sound good? Yes it doesDoes it play as smooth as a Fender Telecaster? Almost, its very close, after changing the nut and adjusting the neck angle.Is it fun and enjoyable to play?Absolutely. It's one of my favorite guitars.Would I do it again?Absolutely. It was very fun to build and it was well worth the money despite the things I had to do or change to improve the playability. It can be a really nice sounding and playing guitar if you have the setup knowledge and are willing to put in the effort to get it right. You need to be comfortable setting the neck relief, string action height, bridge setup (matching angle of saddles to the fret board radius), and setting the intonation. The tools to do this with are available here on Amazon and are cheap to buy.My online name is Freddy_Bueger, so I affectionately named this guitar the "Freddycaster". It is Freddy approved.

The strat body was really nice but the hardware & neck wasnt so nice.I ended up having to scrap the neck because it had a nasty warp going on with it & the fretboard is some sort of man made material like laminated composite or richlite which in general isnt bad but they did say it was rosewood when it most definitely is not.It'd be best to keep in mind that you're gonna have to upgrade the tuners, tremolo (or just the saddles if you deck it), pickups and possibly the neck if you want a instrument that will be reliable & qualityThe pots and switch were fine for being small pots and were pretty close to 250kIn essence i bought this kit for- The body, input jack plate, neckplate, 5-way switch & screws

This is a great DIY kit. I was not expecting much because of the cheap price. I was wrong. Yes, it doesn't come with any instructions but there are plenty of videos on YT that show you how to wire it, how to set the intonation, and string level. It also feels and sounds great.

UPDATE : The company saw my review and offered either a refund or replacement kit. I asked for another kit, but then they said they could only offer a refund. However, they did promptly refund me. Due to that, I have added a star back on for customer service, as this was unexpected., and a good gesture on their part.ORIGINAL REVIEWI got this kit because it offered a P style and Humbucker pickup combo, which I thought would be fun, and those are hard to find. I have built several kits before, but this is the first time with this brand. The body is pretty standard basswood cut, though the pickup cavity routing was a little rough. The neck shape is pretty chunky, like a baseball bat, a "fat C" shape. I'm going to have to sand quite a bit of it away to make it comfortable, and I have big hands.The wiring isn't too difficult. The pots are already wired together, so all you have to do is wire the pickups to the volume pots, and wire the output jack. As long as you remember the white wire is hot, and solder it to the middle lug of the volume pot, and the black wire is ground, so you wire it to the top of the volume pot, you will be all set. With that being said, I almost wish they had not done any of the wiring, as I don't care for how they linked all the controls together, as it results in some weird volume drops between the two pickups, and the tone control for the P pickup really doesn't do much of anything. Luckily, the P pickup doesn't sound bad. I'm still on the fence about the humbucker. I also haven't dialed in the pickup height, so it may sound better after I do that.I have a few more gripes that knock this kit down a couple stars for me. First is that the control knobs did not want to come off. The knobs are supposed to come off the pots with just a little effort, so that you can get at the nut to tighten or remove the pots from the pickguard (which I had to do to paint the pickguard for this build). I had to use pliers to remove all 4 of them, and on one knob the knob was on so tightly that whole shaft of the pot came out. So....crappy control knobs.Second, the screws for the tuning machines are of poor quality. I had the screw heads come off two screws while screwing in the tuners (see pic).However, the biggest gripe I have is with the notch cut into the body to access the truss rod. The truss rod in this kit is accessed through the "body side' of the neck, which is fine, but they cut the notch about a quarter inch too short, which means the allen wrench can't fit into the notch to adjust the truss rod (see pic). This isn't just a mistake on my body, as the pickguard is also cut the same way. This means that in order to adjust the truss rod without damaging the body or pickguard, you have to remove the entire neck, which is just a really poor design oversight. I ended up taking of the pickguard and jamming the allen wrench in, putting some dings in the body in order to do so, which were later covered by putting the pickguard back on. Because of these issues, I won't be buying this brand kit again.