Guitar Kit World Alder TE Guitar Kit Review and Demo Part 1: Build Your Own Deluxe T-style On A Budget

Here’s my first few thoughts on the quality of the kit and the building experience.

Get To Know The Kit

It’s pretty hard to a find decent T-style cheaper than $199.99 USD these days, but if you’re willing to look past the typical Squier/Harley Benton options there are some gems to be found. The only catch is that this one requires some DIY muscle. I had the urge to move away from traditional big box brand guitar reviews while getting back to my roots this summer with some DIY guitar kit content. This kit from Guitar Kit World helps accomplish both tasks and I’ve been having a pretty fun time dusting my tools off. This is a pretty standard Deluxe T-style build, with dual humbuckers, the Gibson-style 4 knob layout, and a bolt-on Mahogany neck and Ebony fretboard joined to the solid Alder body. Do to the big F’s recent shenanigans, I was told explicitly to refer to this as a T-style, but you all know what this guitar is.

So Far So Good: First Thoughts On The Quality Of The Kit

While I’m still wrapping up the wiring, my progress through the summer has been smooth overall (minus that bump in the road with the tuner described below). The wood quality has been surprisingly high, which motivated me to do a nice oil finish with a wet sand into the grain. I love natural wood guitars and in particular, I think that approach really shines on T-style guitars. I’ve been pretty impressed with the neck in particular, with a nice feel and a solid fretboard. The fret edges could use a slight touch up, but that’s par for the course in this price range. It is far from unplayable or uncomfortable though.

None of the hardware or electronics are name brand, but from my initial inspection they seem perfectly serviceable. Future iterations of this project will have upgrades to both sets of components, but for now we’re going to review this as “stock”, or atleast close to it. Upon assembling the neck, I noted one of the tuner sheaths was incorrectly machined without grooves. This provided a good lesson, as Guitar Kit World only has a 30-day window for free replacement parts. While I was long past this window they were kind enough to offer a replacement, the only catch being it would take a month or so to arrive. Good customer service by them but I also am uncertain they would have done that if I wasn’t reviewing this kit. So just something to keep in mind, inspect every piece of your kit asap! All that to say that I did order some new tuners for the kit that won’t be included in later upgrade projects and contents.

The ultimate plan is to eventually upgrade the hardware and electronics, so I’m not too concerned with the overall quality of the stock bits. So far so good, but of course you’re not getting premium parts in this kit. This is actually my second go-round with a Guitar World Kit so I do have a certain level of trust and comfort with the stock parts, as I previously assembled a custom painted Firebird for Ultimate-Guitar. Now it is time to wire this thing up and get ready to put it through its paces at band practice! Stay tuned for part 2 soon!