Stewmac.com has some great 6 string guitar kits out. They have the Strat, Tele, SG, LP and LP Jr. kits and just recently added Little guitar kits. Now they have 16.3" scale little guitar kits in Strat and Tele style for right at $140 USD.
The little kits are great for kids, but they are also fun for adults too. There's a "Little Guitar" craze going on right now among adults. They like to get the little 6 string Squier brand guitars and convert the nut and bridge for 3 groups of 2 strings(half of a 12 string offering) for some fuller sounding 3 group sound.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qFxXhg6zwA
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Great for people like me who always forget something on their order!
I'm always buying little things here and there from them, first time to buy a kit though since I usually build one myself. Couldn't pass up the price for a neck that's already made and the Mahogany wood to make a body and neck would cost me about the same price.
Well Stewmac had a sale on their solid body guitar kits and their Gibson SG style kit was on sale at half price($169) and the shipping was free. I couldn't resist that. I've been wanting an SG since I was a teen. Almost got one back in the 80's, but it sold before I got back to the music store the next day.
The wood is all Mahogany and all the routes are tight and line up correctly, which is good when it comes to kits. One of the tuner holes are a bit off, but doable. The headstock is squared off for my choosing of design. The hardware is decent. The 2 humbucker pickups are overwound(12k/12.5k for both), but I got a set of dual rail humbuckers from my friend Vladimir at Deneb-Tone pickups(www.deneb-tone.com) to put in this guitar. I'll probably ditch the ABR style bridge for a Rollor bridge and put a Duesenberg Les Trem in place of the stop-tail piece. The output jack goes on front of these guitars and the wood is only 1/4" thick there so they can tear out. So I'll bee moving the jack to the end side like a Les Paul has. I'll fill in the extra hole on the top with an extra 3-way switch(on/off/on) for a small varitone type circuit. The neck is slightly bowed back, but that should be fixed with a trussrod adjustment and strings.
The guitar body and neck are lighter than I expected. The neck is bound and the inlays look great. All it needs is a little filing on the fret ends and replacing the plastic nut with a Tusq one. The top isn't suited for a stained Cherry Red transparent finish like I hoped it would be so it'll get painted. Not sure which color yet, I have some nice Blue Metallic, Pearl White and I got a container of Blue sparkle to choose from.
All about the pickups with some videos:www.deneb-tone.com/dual-rail-humbuckers
Guitar kits are for the tinkerer in all of us. Something that can be put together and even customized. There was a very short lived mini guitar craze sometime in the late 80's. Centering around one brand and ZZTop. Forget the name of the guitars. They were kinda weird looking.
Need to check out the mini kits. Guessing kind of like your very own electric ukulele? Also think this is a marketing idea to make uks look cool. :) Doubling up the strings could make a cool sounding three string ukulele. Even better for a full sized CBG.
It was the Chiquita travel guitar.
Also used by Marty McFly in Back to the Future and more recently McFly the UK pop band from the last decade.
Oh yeah, I remember those now.
Are you thinking about the Luge? They had a 3 string guitar for kids to learn on and they had Diatonic fretting.
Stewmac does have Uke, Mandolins and acoustics in kit form, but those are a bit expensive compared to Gitty's CBG guitar and uke kits.
I like the Squier 3/4 size guitars for kids, which you can pick up cheap in yard sales or pawnshops and you can easily convert one to a 3 string, 4string or one of those group pairings Cubano Guitar with some Lipstick Tubes.
Hi Paul, kits are great for getting someone started in guitar building, I have an instance that demonstrate this.
As a gift to my son, who lives on the other side of Australia, I sent him the cbg you see in the photo as a kit. He is a mechanic and his shed was full of motorbikes and such. But from that kit a seed was sown and he built the cbg he's holding in the middle of the second photo.
Then two years from the kit project he sends me the third photo of his most recent build. All stemming from a simple kit guitar.
From three to six strings Taff
Looks like you got something good started Taff.
Our CBG's can be modified to accent 3 or 4 groups of 2 strings.
My first attempt at making a Dulcitar had 3 groups of 2 strings and most Mandolins/Bouzouki's have 4 groups of 2 strings on fingerboards of the same width as our CBG fingerboards.
So why should we try more strings? Bigger/fuller sound. It's harder to play lead guitar work on a 12 string guitar, which is why some people would have a double neck guitar to use the 12 for rhythm and 6 for lead. Maybe we could use that in our CBG World. 6 string(3 groups of 2) for rhythm and 3 string for lead or maybe a hybrid setup of strings on one neck.