Bad Cat Instruments Electric Guitar Kit, DIY Unfinished Electric Guitar Kit, 6 String LP Guitar Builder Kit with Black Pickguard, Solid Mahogany Body and Rosewood Fingerboard with Chrome Hardware

I'm always apprehensive when buying a guitar kit. Upon receipt of this kit the first thing I noticed was the craftsmanship. It was excellent and required very little prep for finishing. Mine came with no instructions so I contacted Bad Cat Instruments, the seller, and they responded within an hour and sent me via pdf everything I needed. I have conversed with Jason a few times and he and the rest of the guys are amazing and extremely helpful and friendly and want to make sure I am completely satisfied with my purchase. I will not be buying from anyone else now that I have found Bad Cat Instruments. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

After days of research I chose this kit. BAD DECISION! Immediately I noticed serious flaws in the body. 1. Huge black (burn) marks around the neck pickup that extended to the neck and of the body. 2. Veneer on the lower side is cracked. 3. Countless glue marks all around the body.. I decided to give it a try to see if it's salvageable. I very lightly sanded the burn marks & the black only spread. The crack is not repairable unless I wanted to use filler , primer & paint the body BUT that's not what I wanted to do. So in short after trying to salvage the guitar base I now have a $200 piece of firewood. VERY disappointed in the quality. Clearly this company has ZERO quality control. The ONLY positive I can say about this is the neck appears to be a solid piece (not pieced together).. However just eyeballing it it appears to be slightly bent or possibly twisted. Now that I have a body I can't use I have no reason to verify that. Parts seem to be all there but they're thrown in a bag & NO instructions for wiring.... I ordered this kit on a Thursday & was offered free shipping. I opted to pay $12 for shipping to get it by Saturday. Today is Monday & it arrived today. I DID GET A REFUND ON SHIPPING. But that hardly covers the issues I have with this junk. I can't recommend this nor would I.... In fact I say if you are even expecting mediocre quality you should look elsewhere. First & last time buyer from Badcat... Buyer beware!!! Find another brand.Update: after going through the parts included its no surprise that parts are missing AND the pots appear to be pre soldered. Incorrectly I might add.... By far the worse purchase I've made on Amazon... Bad Cat responded to an email.... By doing Nothing. Amazon offered only $20 reimbursement that never got credited. So I say again... DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT.

I've done quite a few kits so far, this being my second bad cat kit. So good stuff first. Pretty good neck pocket fit (could be better, we'll get to this later) no side slop, neck slides in and is very tight. Nice flame maple veneer, and neck profile is very comfortable. Not thin, not thick. Kinda silly but the most impressive thing about the kit was the fitment of the control cavities. Super tight and perfect fit. Almost to the point that I was thinking about sanding the edges of the cavities a bit because I think taking off the backing plates will be a challenge if I need to replace a pot or toggle switch. I was also very surprised at the fret job. I still leveled/crowned/polished the frets, because there were some high spots, but it was actually fairly decent. I didn't have to to any fret end dressing. The fret ends were actually dressed very nicely and it was smooth. I was very surprised with the nut, it's made of solid something, bone maybe? I just regret sanding it down too much when I went to set it up, I had to order a replacement nut and I just went with a graphtech tusq XL nut since it's better nut. I appreciate honesty of the seller, when I asked if the guitar was a maple top or maple veneer they did tell me if was a mahogany body with only a maple veneer. Which I was hoping such the case would be a little cheaper, but hey it's still a nice kit.Ok the not so good. If you refer to the pic you can see the slightest gap at the heel of the neck. And this was not a glue up error as you can see in the side pick of the neck pocket, it's glued up as tight as it can get. But it isn't a huge gap and it's something I can live with. The body is a 3 piece body that are not equal in width, which is kinda ugly especially if you want to do a natural finish like I did. I guess we can include the electronics of this kit, although I never used the pots or pickups that come in these kits, I always source my own internals with CTS/Switchcraft parts and pickups of my choosing, in this case I went with gretsch blacktop filtertrons that come in the more affordable line of gretsch guitars. I find a nice deal on a used set. I used hip shot locking tuners so I can't comment on the quality of the tuners, again I never use the provided tuners. I did however use the bridge and tailpiece. Great fitment but pretty cheap materials but I don't really care about that necessarily. Something to note if you want to use switch craft for CTS pots, the holes and cavities aren't cut for that. I was able to squeeze in the 3 way toggle, but not without bending the bridge and neck terminal, and I had to drill larger holes for the CTS pots to fit.Overall a great kit for the money, and much better than my previous kit I did from another company, although they did offer a mahogany body, maple cap and flame maple veneer and it was cheaper, but there were some fitment issues and other little things that made the kit a more difficult kit to do. If you're looking for a all mahogany body with a flame maple veneer don't hesitate to pick this kit up. It really is a nice kit for the money, better one's for sure out there, but this one's a keeper!