Bass Guitar Kit P-Style : Fairly good value, but you have to want to build your own bass

I bought this because I have always wanted to build my own guitars and I felt that starting with a kit would be a good first step.

The finish on the neck in my kit was (and remains) excellent. Unfortunately there are a number of machining scratches visible on the body. I could fix these easily with a little sanding, but that also removes the sealant coating which then needs to be re-applied before painting. I opted not to treat the scratches before painting because I will be using my bass for punk music.

Fitting the machine heads to the head of the guitar was reasonably easy once I realised that they were completely different to the ones described in the instruction book. Unfortunately the screws supplied with the kit for this purpose are quite weak; the head came off 2 of the 16 during installation (and I was being really careful after the first failure)

Fitting the neck to the body was simple, and did match the instructions.

In my kit, the machined slot in the faceplate to allow for the neck was approximately 1mm too narrow. I had to make it larger using cutting pliers to complete the build, with the result that my instrument is not quite as pretty as it could be.

Pickup installation was smooth.

The bridge is in the right place to allow all four strings to be adjusted for correct intonation, which was no more or less tedious on this than any other guitar or bass.

The sound is good once you get the action and the pickup positions set correctly.

If you want to build your own instruments in the future this is a good place to start: it is far easier that starting with a heap of wood and going from there, but not so easy that you will learn nothing from doing it. It took me about 2 hours to assemble (not including painting) and set-up.