Good review. I like a build that is "out of the box" workable. I too have seen the kit prices jump. I blame you you tubers because you've inspired me to buy and build our instruments too. Supply and demand! Thank you Dan.
Can't wait to see how finishes go down on that wood. I love that your vids keep an eye out for the budget-concious viewers. Great video, keep 'em coming!
If that thing takes stains/dyes, it'd look fantastic in purple. Glad to hear it's a good kit. I was looking at their "zebra" Les Paul kit and think i'll save up for it
Great to hear (and see) a good kit on Amazon! I’ve wanted to build a T-style guitar for a while now but have shy’d away because “good” kits are darn near the price of a Squire. I’m VERY interested in this one! Love your videos, keep them coming!
Yay!! Finally a new kit video! I now know your reason not to do them. Kind of gone off RU-vid for a while, but it's good to be back to this videos!!! I also watch the fretless bass, it turned out beautiful Dan! This kit looks awesome too, I'll recommend it to a friend who's looking to work on a Tele of his own. See you on Wednesday!
Dude! I love your channel!!! Beyond unbiased and usefully informative too...and you crack me up. Please keep this up, you help so many of us who love building our guitars.
Oh my! I can surely call it the most beautiful Tele-kit I've seen yet. And with an option to make it pickguardless, it is amazingly flexible to customize. Sounds brilliant and I was really surprized with the build quality.
I built a LP kit like this. It is built nice but the “wood” is really soft and the frets will lift from time to time. I wish they used a different material for the fretboard. I used black dye and it held it well. The stripes are still visible. I did not use any of the electronics or hardware however.
@@DavidHBurkart i have seen and repaired some cheaper chinese guitars with engineered wood are pretty bad.. fret board tend to dry out acoustic bridge with these type of woods tend to cracks and wrap.. they are pretty much so soft like pine.. and i am talking about engineered wood that comes in cheap chinese guitars nowadays
Man… I wish I had known about this a year ago. I spent much of the lockdown building a Fender Tele Partscaster to keep from going nuts. Loved doing it and it sounds awesome. I’m really proud of it & of how much building it made me learn. But this would’ve been a great first time builders kit! The Zebra wood looks AWESOME! I’ve never seen that type before, but it looks amazing. Awesome video! Guns & guitars… two of my favorite things!
And now we just need the upgrade video... I think this wood could look quite good with the right stain and some upgraded pickups is a must for a kit like this. Some stacked pickups would be my kind of choice as well as upgrading the pots/switch combo to allow some different options, maybe using something like the switching on the Ibanez AZ series.
Great to see you making regular guitar content again. I was wondering about the Tele bridge grounding. Since the pickup itself is grounded and the bottom plate is soldered to the ground lead of the pickup, and that plate has screws going through it which contact the "tray" (calling it that because it's often an "ashtray" style saddle / pup-ring) that houses the pickup... wouldn't another ground wire for the tray be redundant?
I'm really looking forward to this one, As a side note, I bought an engineered zebra wood p bass kit from pitbull guitars based out of Australia late summer 2019. The neck was maple, the body like this telle. It turned out great and took some tung oil I had laying around.
I built a Pitbull Jaz bass over the winter and was overall very pleased with the kit. I did have to replace all the screws because every one of them was super soft and broke or stripped very easily (even the pic guard screws). And that was even after drilling pilot holes. And the kit strings were totally crap- but I always use EB Super Slinkies for playing. The kit strings I only use for the build. Other than that, everything else was fine. Turned out to be a really great playing bass.
So I found this video on November 18th, of course. Seems like a relatively high quality kit as far as kits go. I've seen $400-500 guitars in stores that need the frets leveled.
I got a Zebrawood Jazz bass body for my birthday last year, I've not built it yet as I'm finishing other projects but I've seen them with gloss finishes and that wood is utterly glorious with a gloss finish.
I like that you didn’t pull punches on the frets, it’s a great project for someone to learn how to work on frets, but it’s something that does take some doing to learn to do properly. I want to snag one that just looks fun
Hey Dan, love your review. I built a cheap Tele kit and put a set of O.C. DUFF ala Redd Volkeart pickups in it plus other Fender custom parts. One of my favorite guitars now. Keep up the great work bro!
It looks and sounds awesome for a guitar kit! The zebra wood looks super good, I hope it stains well, can't wait to see it finished. I would've put some dark wood on the fretboard instead though, to not overpower with the zebra
Would love to hear how it turns out with some dye on the zebra wood. If I got one of these kits I would want to do a forearm contour, so wonder how the zebra wood would take that kind of mod.
That's Rockin' Dan'O. About an hour total from pieces in a box to plugged into an amp and making sound. Maybe another hour for the fret job? Then Jam Time, Thanks for the video and heads up on BAD CAT.
These kits look really nice! I've been curious about the Zebrawood also. Started checking these kits out last week, good to see somebody who knows what they're doing taking at shot with one. Was contemplating the Zebra LP kit. My thought was just a simple hand rubbed tung oil finish. Figured that would be easy and work pretty well with whatever the hell that engineered stuff is. Leary about that thin veneer on the regular LP kit, but would like to possibly try. Would "tung oil" that as well, and it's less expensive. Looking forward to see how this Tele turns out in the end!
Cool, I've been looking at the badcat kits and noticed in the reviews people aren't expecting fake wood with this kit. Btw, I'll be binge watching that rick super build shortly.
I appreciate your honestly in your reviews. I really like that grain on that zebrawood, purple stain would be insane. Only wish it was H-H configuration. Would you be able to route the current pickup config into an H-H?
I'll be there! I've never made a guitar but it's on my to do list. Cool kit, sounded like a tele, Zebrawood is such a pretty looking wood too. Awesome channel, thanks for the content!
I agree with the a tele neck pickup cover surround. But since you have this amazing body, take advantage of it. That would be a Tele pickup surround out of wood, maybe your Birch Plywood, and the same for the control plate. And stained to match. That's what I'd do. But this look is interesting 🤔. I might haft to look at a Les Paul, or another option from them.
I bought the LP style. The wood was very nice but everything else was not. The frets were not fully pressed down, they were .006" to .008" off the fret board in the center. No instructions were supplied, I had to contact them through FB and they emailed me some other companies wiring and build instructions! Tuning machines look nice, but they're the cheap Chinese wobbly type. The bridge was of the $12 quality type. I am currently waiting for a different crowning file since my Stew Mac didn't quite fit the way I liked. I will deal with all the other issues as I need to since putting quality tuners and bridge would almost double what I paid for the kit. Don't get me wrong - I knew and expected it to be like this. Every kit I've made from China (7) has been like this. I am retired so there's no rush. It's my hobbie.
I'll be looking forward to finding out how the guitar takes stain. It does look pretty good. Might just leave it natural and put oil on it if it will take oil.
Not bad but Earl slick sells a complete and perfect tele and strat, guitar for about the same price. With better frets, ful pots, Variety of finished and configs. AND BRASS HARDWARE. IN THE SAME PRICE RANGE Right out of Boston Ma,
I just recently did the gold hardware LP zebrawood kit. My list of complaints is too long to list here. But to answer your question about the stains, I did three coats of a clear stain and it took it well. I did a spray clear acrylic top coat. Took it well too, but did not polish to a mirror finish.
I put together the Les Paul style of this line of kits. I slapped some EMGs in it and had it set up professionally (because I am lazy). Folks won't believe this, but it sounded better than my Gibson LP Studio. So then I had to upgrade the Gibsons pickups to EMGs last week.
I kept looking at the Zebra wood, and thinking it just didn’t look like real wood. Now I know what it reminded me of, laminate wood rifle stocks. I have seen some very nice stocks, but they are manufactured, and the Zebra wood looks manufactured.
Fuzzy Socks! That things looks awesome! I'm really hoping I can find the live stream! 40 mins to assemble, pfft hold my soda and watch me take a half day job and turn it into an all day adventure!
I have zebra wood kit from bad cat, and was wondering if you ever finished this guitar? I'd love to watch that video if so, but haven't been able to find it. Thanks!
Yeah, I miss the kit vids, modding a Glarry is probably cheaper than most kits though, hint hint. Have you tried replacing the ceramic mags with neodymium yet?
When I see any sort of Telecaster video I click on it. I subscribed after I found you support 2A rights. That's a nice looking guitar! If I was working on it... Probably would put in a .047uf capacitor on the tone pot and a dual rail humbucker pickup in the bridge. Have a great upcoming Thanksgiving holiday!
Cool looking kit Dan. Pretty sure you'll find that wood is cottonwood/poplar (my local Kit supplier has some similar models and just finishing a fretless bass in the same wood) From my understanding it's just a dye process so it is real wood just chemically treated to create the grain contrast, but who knows it could be extruded pulp in layers to make it. It does smell bad if you machine it which could be a binder or just the dye. Sure is a cool looking wood though All the best 👍✌😎
According to one description I've seen on the web, the "Zebrawood" (or "ZebraWood" in some descriptions) contains Bakelite, which is a phenolic plastic. Since every user description I've seen says it's a heavy guitar. Cottonwood or poplar would be light.
I bought a guitar fetish jazz bass body and used all amazon parts Wilkinson pickups and put it together and gave to my son as a graduation present 3 years ago.
Nice Dan. I've always been curious about these and it definitely looks good. 5:00 mst is going to be tough on Wednesday. Gotta go to AWANA to hear verses.
One of the cool things about teles is that if you use a bridge pickup with a real brass bottom plate, you don't need a bridge ground wire because the pu ground wire is connected to the brass plate on the pu and the pu screws connect that brass plate to the metal bridge plate making the full connection
Thanks for the tip. Normally buy in all loose parts and then assemble them. I enjoy this a lot and the result is great. I keep these guitars to myself much to my wife's dismay. 🤣
First time viewer and a guitar newbie. Could you reduce the weight by routing out some of the wood on the back? Would that significantly affect the tone?
Ive been looking at guitar kits for several years now. I noticed prices were increasing a decade ago. But today, they are ridiculously expensive for what you get. I mean you can buy a decent new name brand guitar for $300-350. I saw one one reverb last week that was over 200 and wanted twice the kit price for shipping. At this point, i'll just build my own and learn to make necks. Bodies are easy to make Ive made dozens.
DUDE I was really hoping you were going to do a live stream on Nov 17th of you building one, so us idiots could follow along. You should consider that. Run a review and then give us a month to buy the kit, and then live stream. Maybe I’m just goofy. Love your channel. Always have.
If that’s what you guys want to see, I’d be happy to do it! As long as it’s not a set neck kit, not sure I’d want to stream for 24hrs while the glue dries 😂
I've been doing an Explorer Zebra recently from Amazon. I'm using transparent white acrylic paint thinned down with water. The plastic nut broke off when I pushed it with my thumb. I'm working in a Trubone instead. Now I'm worried about the frets popping out. All in all the one I have seems perfect other than the crappy nut. Pocket was great and I'm not using the pickguard. I cut an LP sized circle out of it for the pickup selector switch hole.
Dan, I did the Stratocaster version of these kits and it was very high quality! I ended up getting all black hardware, and a clear pickguard. Came out fantastic! I also did the Les Paul version of it, and that's been my go-to guitar; I'll put it up against any Les Paul, including my Custom Shop LP Custom!! Great vid! I sprayed the Strat with lacquer, but used Tung Oil (the real stuff, not Minwax or whatever) on the Les Paul. Love the feel of the Tung Oil!
Damn, that thing must be BRIGHT ass hell. I've worked on a couple Strat style with zebra wood fretboards, they feel and respond like maple. Addendum: I realized those were actual zebra wood, not laminate or however they do this. There is real Zebra wood. I don't think it's a specific tree, it's something that happens with a few different species.
Curious to see how that comes out if it takes some stain. Great looking guitar regardless, I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at a kit guitar and i do need a tele…. Hmmm. Honestly things like the frets are what have kept me from getting into guitar building, not so much the technical skill (I’m a machinist) but just the sheer cost of good luthier tools.
I have a few videos on how to make the luthier tools out of stuff you probably already have! Works great, you’ll only want to replace them with better stuff if you end up taking up the hobby and building several guitars. I used my home made tools for years!
@@GunsandGuitars yeah I will check those out! Mainly it is the fret leveling tools and nut files, man those are expensive for good tools. I guess I forget sometimes that you actually can make some tools lol I am a machinist so trust me, I know the value of good tools and in my line of work you simply aren’t making them yourself!.
While watching your video, my belt sander kept pestering me for a contoured body and a belly cut. Fender gets $1100.00 for a tele with that, but In my opinion, it beats a "cutting board."
Hi Dan, I don't know if it is possible, but I would love for you to check out a Harley Benton kit from Thomann if you haven't already. I bought their tele kit last year and just like this kit all the holes are predrilled and in the correct position! I think you would love their kits
I dig the zebra striped body and headstock, but it would look better with a rosewood fretboard just to break it up a bit. Interesting to see if it takes stains at all.
