Leo JaymzDIY Single Cut Electric Guitar Kits with Mahogany Body and Neck - Rosewood Fingerboard and All Components Included (LP Hollow)

I have been building one of a kind guitars for last 4 years as extension to my 40 plus years of woodworking. I decided to buy and try out this kit. It came a few days later almost no damage to shipping box. Everything was neatly packaged and the assembly manual was best I have seen for any type of kit build. The description on Amazon said kit was poplar body but box label said basswood which it was. One could easily build this guitar from instructions. I modified the body for better playability adding a back horn scallop and heavily tapered neck attachment. I also increased the size of the perimeter radius. I decided to spray paint the body using duplicator metallic blue paint as a first for me. Because I’m not too familiar with their products I contacted their customer service and they recommended if I was to clear coat the paint I should use their match color acrylic lacquer. Back to build. I found the basswood not the easiest wood to sand. It took 2 times the amount of sanding I do typically do for dyed figured maple and walnut or genuine mahogany. The wood is prone to grain rise and feathering lacking it difficult to get a really smooth finish. You have to use scrapers and go up to 600/ 1000 grit sand paper. Spraying the duplicity primer and sealer with sanding and the metallic blue took again more time to do than I wood have thought. Once done I had very good results. My big issue came with the clear coat. I would not recommend using the clear coat I got per customer service. The first can even after mixing for 1-2 minutes like directions sputtered finish on the body which caused small darkened circles in the paint. I would spray one pass then have to dry the nozzle. I ended up using 2 of the 3 cans and during wet sanding and buffing experienced some issues with the durability of the finish. The neck has an artificial ebony fretboard which you may or may not like. The frets were close to being level but needed a fret leveling job which inexperienced guitar builders might be a problem. After leveling and polishing and sanding the neck I applied a light yellow dye to give it a bit of aged look. I cut the head stock to one of my designs and sanded it and finished it in polyurethane. I have to say the info said it was a maple neck but it looks more like birch. The neck was well carved almost a perfect Fender C shape. Frets finished like they are stainless and are at least medium jumbo. Assembling the guitar was easy as all holes are predrilled no real soldering is necessary as electronics are plug in type. The only item s I changed were nut to bone and bridge to a new one I had which is heavier and saddles more block like. The included bridge is adequate. A pleasant surprise was they included copper foil tape for lining the pickup , input jack cavity and back of pick guard. The finished guitar with stock pickups and small pots sounds very good. I did use Daddarrio 9/42 strings. I did add the bridge to the middle pickup tone control. The tone pots with green capacitors have a good tone sweep. Except for the clear coat issues the guitar came out very good. With my set up at 1.25- 1.5 mm at 12 fret the guitar easily plays and sounds like a medium priced guitar. I can recommend this kit to someone wanting to build a guitar with minimal tools. I can’t recommend painting and clear coating with the dupli color match clear coat.

I bought this to put together for a buddy of mine that’s been wanting this style guitar for a while. Well the pros are the wood is beautiful and not all rough as some kits show up, there was no need for any fret dressing or neck adjustment even the intonation was spot on ( which shocked me) the neck isn’t a wizard neck but still a nice slim neck that feels good in your hands also the quick connector make it very simple to put together no soldering, the pickups are actually pretty good. Now to the cons. The springs that come with it are good if you use the strings that come with it or some sort of lite gauge but if you put any type of heavy strings on here you will need to get better springs. The tuners are bare as bare can be but since it’s a double locking trim that doesn’t matter that much. The fine tuners are rough at first but after you tighten them and loosen them a couple of times then they become easier to work. Overall this is probably one of the best kit builds I’ve done and I’ve done probably over 20 by now. With a little time and energy this could be a real looker and player of a guitar.

I've now built three of the Leo Jaymz kit guitars - the SG style (my first build), the T style (2nd build), and the Explorer (AX) style. Overall, I've hugely enjoyed them and I'm definitely addicted to these things :)The good:- Complete kits, at least for me everything fit together well- Good quality woods. Maybe I just got lucky, but all three of my kits had nice grain, no knots, no issues with the woods. The maple neck on my T style has some quite impressive grain once stained. The AX kit had a small glue stain on the front, but since I was going for a "beat up, reclaimed wood" look, it was no big deal.- Good fret boards - other than polishing the frets and cleaning up 1-2 sharp frets, there was nothing I had to do other than oil the necks.- The price! My wife would tell you it was a relatively cheap way to keep me occupied for weeks :P- The AX guitar had quick connects for the electronics. A welcome surprise!The less good:- The instructions, especially for the SG style, leave a lot to be desired in their clarity. There are definite suggestions on how to make instructions clearer to reduce mistakes. Because of my mistakes on the first guitar, I didn't make any on the 2nd, so that's a plus. The AX style guitar had no instructions at all. So don't do that one first.The subjective:- After the builds, both guitars are quite playable and sound very good. The SG has relatively tame pickups (~9.1k & 9.5k), so hotter than an under-wound PAF, but not super modern either. Sounds very good with some overdrive. I ended up swapping the TL pickups with an aftermarket set since there was a specific sound I was going for. I put an Alpha/Omega set in the Explorer, and they sound epic. I didn't bother checking the output on the stock pickups.- Hardware is all serviceable. If you asked what I would replace, in this order: Tuners, nut, pickups, anything else. That said, both guitars stay in tune just fine.Some lessons learned:- Mock up all the components before you assemble or paint anything. On the SG style guitar, it turns out if you just use the measurements in the instructions, at least on mine, the neck gets glued too close to the pickup for the pickup ring to fit. It also means the intonation is slightly off now that it's all assembled. Similarly, on the T style, the aftermarket bridge pickup was slightly larger than the cavity in the wood. No big deal, i just shaved a couple mms of wood off and now it's a perfect fit.- On both guitars, there's a ground wire that goes to the bridge. Forgetting it on the T style bridge isn't a big deal, since you can just remove the bridge with a few screws. On the SG guitar, you can't remove the bridge screw holes once they are in, so i had to get some conductive adhesive to make the ground wire work.Now that I've built a couple, I will definitely build more. Particularly for guitars in a style of music I don't normally way, it's a great way to get an instrument you like at a good price, and get some good enjoyment along the way. If you are trying to do this to get a PRS 10 top instrument for $200, you'll probably be disappointed. If you are doing this for fun and to come out with a totally great playable instrument, you'll have a lot of fun doing this.

Très bien emballé et tout est en bon état.Je suis surpris par la qualité pour le prix. Tout s’ajuste parfaitement, les trous pré percés sont au bon endroit, le manche est droit et le bois est plus que correct. Si vous n’y connaissez rien, le livret de montage est très bien fait et n’importe qui est capable de monter sa guitare. Aucun défaut notable. Je l’ai monté après un bon polissage des frettes, juste pour voir s’il y avait le moindre problème. Et bien non. Rien à signaler. Reste à voir si je la teinte ou si je la peint.Pour le prix franchement je suis tout à fait satisfait.Une vidéo va suivre sur ma chaîne YouTube 👍🏻

“Poplar” body strat kit - Neck appears well made straight and of decent wood. Minimal fret work needed, just a little smoothing of sharp ends. The body is very soft and light, seems more similar to pine than poplar. Wood grain is pleasant and would look ok with an oil finish. I’m going to prime and paint. I have applied a wood hardener to firm up the surface in hopes of reducing dents and dings in the future.I regret not spending the extra $10 for the “mahogany” body option. I have ordered a mahogany SG kit that I am quite happy with the quality of wood. If I had the neck I received along with the body in mahogany I think I’d be very happy. All the routing and drilling appears clean and accurate.The hardware and electronics appear low quality but serviceable. I purchased the kit to see how nice of a guitar I could build out of it. From what I can tell so far it’s going to be a nice foundation to work off of.Update - Fretboard is artificial fiber composite. Very dense and uniform. I tried to remove the plastic nut to upgrade to bone and had tear out of the material on the tuner head side of the nut. Whatever is used to glue the nut in is the most tenacious adhesive I have ever experienced. I was unable to separate the torn out fretboard from the plastic nut even when the joint was heated to the point that the nut was soft and deforming. instead of regluing the torn out material I chose to file out the remainder of the fretboard and glue in an ebony block to reshape.

Pros:Electronics are plug and play so no wiring or soldering required.Manual is easy to read and well designed.Neck was straight. No adjustment to the truss rod was needed. Body was well cut and shaped.Neck fit in to the neck pocket very snug. Couldn't ask for better.Set up:Frets did required leveling and crowning.Overall no sharp frets. Frets seem to be good quality.Nut required cutting as the string slots left the action too high.These are no concern as its to be expected. Just note worthy for beginners building a guitar for the first time. Even expensive guitars require fret and nut adjustments as a set up.Cons:Had an issue with selector switch as there is no tone difference between the middle and neck position of the 3 way switch.Emailed Leo Jaymz directly through their site regarding this issue and no response after 2 weeks. Have not tinkered with the electronics yet as I have been waiting for a reply.2 stars deducted from the score for these 2 points.Overall fun project and well worth the price. Planning to upgrade the selector switch hoping to resolve this issue.Will update review if I get an email back.

I'm going to start with the good, Well packaged, box came in pristine condition. The plug and play wiring I love, no soldering involved. The bad, this is a bday gift for my daughter and as I didn't have time to return this item I have to live with the imperfections. Considering it was packaged so well, the body had awful gouges that I could not sand out. I would have put it through a plainer if I had one, that's how deep the gouges were, had it been one, might have taken it better but along the entire bottom and up top this guitar had been damaged badly before it was even packaged. I wish the picture I added showed them. The strings shipped along are garbage, 4 of the 6 snapped before in tune.