BexGears DIY Electric Guitar Kits Mapel Neck okoume wood Body

Seller is very quick to reply to inquiries. I thought I had missing hardware and they responded within minutes offering to ship the parts out the next day. Turns out the hardware was attached to the back of the pickup magnet (I errantly assumed those were only for the pickups, man do I feel stupid). Good seller, and I have another guitar ordered from them.The kit is quite well done for a kit guitar. The neck is much nicer than I expected. Easy to assemble, holes line up, no issues. If you want a finish other than natural, you will need to put in some prep work (minor tooling marks around edge of the body). I have already ordered another kit and will very likely order at least one more.

A few concerns I had I will share and explain. First off, I found this kit by searching for a Solo kit, made by Solo. I realized this was not that kit, the Solo comes with a Mahogany body, but it's reported as being light weight.The body:Okoume wood is light but is considered a hard wood. It's a type of mahogany but is not as heavy. That said, Solo could sell this as that and not technically be lying. Okoume wood has been used in the recent years in guitar bodies, some even selling for over $3000, so it's not a bad wood, you just need VERY sharp tools to work it. It is close grained and will take paint well, but also takes a stain well.The neck:The neck was surprisingly well built and has a slender profile. It feels very similar to my Warmoth neck. The fret ends need no work, but a couple frets need to be crowned. The neck pocket is a tight fit, as much as it can be, the bottom of the neck completes the pickup cavity. Unless the neck and body were both modified, there is no way to get the neck to fit tighter with two additional screws pulling it in more.The tuners:Are lose fitting and will be the first thing I swap out. Not even going to mention the strings beyond they help line up the neck during assembly. But that's every guitar ever, including those purchased in a store. Buy the strings you want. The bodies and necks are matched individually together and numbered. There was a concern I read about the scale length of the neck. This was not my experience. The scale is standard 24 3/4" and the scale was true to that. The pre-drilled holes for the bridge fit where it should have. Not sure if something changed, but mine was fine.The electronics:The pickups work but mine are not marked as being for the neck of bridge. Gotta use a volt meter to figure out which is which. The knobs look great! The switch switches. I'll be replacing the pickups and pots later to a 4 way system for switching the coils on and off.I purchased this kit with the intention of using it as a guide and complete road map to build one from scratch and have a 3D model to use for reference. I will still build one, but I'll keep this one around and use it to play and have fun with. It's not a bad kit, in fact it's a great kit that just needs work. This is not a complete DIY guitar, it's a project. Going in with that understanding, you could wind up with a really cool and playable guitar with the right skills to build it and give it a proper set up.What I found in my searches though, this kit is a de-branded Harley Benton kit that sells for about $80 US depending on the exchange rate and their shipping is super fast, despite being really far away. The instructions were emailed to me with the Harley Benton PDF that had the branding removed from it.Even with the cost of shipping, it's about $50 cheaper buying directly from the manufacturer of this kit. Looking over the Harley Benton website, nearly everyone is happy with the purchase of this kit. Calling this a SOLO SG style kit is rather misleading and the markup from them is pretty high, considering they're only buying and de-branding them.It's a great platform to start building a great guitar. Building a kit is not going to save money, it allows you to build something you couldn't otherwise buy, and it's a lot of fun, but it's work.

This kit was super easy and fun to build. The wiring is already done. No soldering required. I prefer staining to painting. I cut a little notch in the headstock to look more like the open book shape.

Let me start by saying that I've bought two of these, because I was hoping that the second one would be better. No. The list of things that I've found wrong with these is extensive, but the biggest problem is the alignment of the holes. The are not consistent, and they do not match the hardware supplied. With the first guitar, I was able to get the hardware mounted, but with a lot of forcing that shouldn't have been necessary. The second guitar was so far off that I had to Bondo the existing holes, and drill new ones. The holes for the neck didn't line up either, and those had to be bonded and redrilled as well. The neck screws are about 1/8" too long, and will crack the fretboard if they are torqued too tight, and no one wants a loose neck., so...Update 9/20/2023: The seller agreed to refund $40 for this, which is a plus. Hopefully they will gt their QA department to look these over better before sending them out the door. I upgraded the rating to 3 stars because they at least made the effort to correct the issue.The cover plate for the back does not fit the routed hole either, so that had to be sanded on both guitars before I could mount it. And lastly, the neck on both guitars needed quite a bit of help (fret leveling and crowning).I can understand that these are inexpensive kits, but CNC shouldn't allow this to happen on anything in this day and age.I do like my finished products, but with a bit of extra effort in QA on the part of BexGear, these could be a really great product.

My first time building a guitar. it did come with directions which were pretty straight forward. Even the electrical was pretty simple to install. didnt end up painting it. the wood finish actually looks pretty nice as is. Was able to assembe the whole thing with nothing but a multi tool. Only took about 5 hours to assemble while watching tv. Good value

The kit itself is OK. You can make it into a player if you know what you are doing, and have some skills. Will likely have to modify some things, but that has been true with every kit I have worked on. The reason I am giving 5 stars is because I had a problem with the neck. I didn't notice it until I had already completed the finish work, but it was unusable. I was certain I was out of luck. I explained the issue, and provided a couple photos, and the seller sent me a new neck the next day, no questions asked. Couldn't ask for better service.