1st Guitar build, from kit

[Matt Monte]

Hi all, just wanted to share my first guitar build that I did for a friend. I started with an ebay Chinese les paul kit. The guitar body is solid mahogany with a maple top and "flame maple" veneer cap. The neck is maple. Doing it this way greatly simplified the build. I used the tuners, bridge and tailpiece from the kit as they were of decent quality. The strings, electronics, wiring, pickups and plastic pieces were thrown out as they were of unacceptable quality. I replaced them with Ernie Ball strings, guitar fetish pickups, Alpha pots with 250k ohm volume and 500k ohm tone. I used shielded wiring from stew mac. Overall this was a great build and she was very happy. On to the photos.
Inlay Work, walnut on maple.

[Matt Monte]

Stain and Tru-Oil finish.

[Matt Monte]

Inlay and engraving.

[Matt Monte]

Assembly







The Happy new owner!

[Nick Middleton]

I like the color! Not bad figure for an eBay kit.

Roughly, how much you think you spent on the whole thing; including finishing materials/parts/etc?

[Matt Monte]

I spent $300 for everything. Kit was $130+ $20 shipping and the other $150 was spent on upgraded electronics (guitar fetish), finishing materials (home depot) and some more ebay sourced deatail pieces. Yes, I was very happy with the quality of the wood considering it was a cheap kit. The neck did require some hand fitting, but overall it was good fit and finish.