Dreadnought Guitar Kit

After finding few imperfections on couple of parts of the kit, I've contacted StewMac and replacements were at my address in less then a week. 10 out of 10 for customer service. Kit is excellent, this is mu second one and I'm enjoying every second of working with it.

I have built 29 Instruments from scratch. I wish I had built from the kit first. I learned a lot. Especially when it came to adjusting and setting the neck. I am well pleased with the completed guitar. My grandson is too.

I had a lot of fun building this guitar. I am a beginner in the world of building. I had built a parts-caster the past summer and i thought, why not drop $500 on the table and build an acoustic!? The kit took me about 2 months to complete. It all depends on how often you work at it though. I put in some long days using stupid little hand tools laying around my garage. Just to clarify, i didn't use a shop or shop tools. I basically did everything by hand except for the binding routing which is a loud of fun if your a first timer! One tip to start, if you don't have files or chisels get some because you are going to need them, and when your impatient like me, you'll try to use something else instead and you'll mess things up so just get yourself the right tools to start with. There's a trapeze tailpiece on it because my neck angle was off and the height of a traditional acoustic saddle wouldn't compensate. The bone nut was bending and looked like it was going to break from the pressure of the strings. So I needed something stronger. I dropped another $60 on the tailpiece and the new bridge. But it worked! Don't let me scare you away from trying it though. It's an extremely rewarding experience and you really do come out with a great sounding guitar. Stewart McDonald gives you a really good start with some high quality woods and such. I bought the mahogany bolt-on. You can't really blame them for anything that goes wrong because its most likely a result of your impatience when something goes wrong. And one more thing. When you first get the thing don't rip it out of the box and start gluing stuff together like i did. The first step of the whole build can mess up your neck angle. Just saying. Overall this is a great kit and think twice before buying.....but on that third time you think about it just click the buy it button.

I wanted to give my daughter, for her 16th birthday, something different... something that she would remember for a long time. She is a great singer and guitar player, so… I decided to committed myself to this project. This was my first kit ever that require glue! I had zero experience, but I was welling to learn. It was a very rewarding to build this guitar. Thank you Steward MacDonald for helping me to build memories that will live for the rest of my days.

My first build and it went pretty well. Some minor differences between the manual and video so you study both and make up your mind. Access to truss rod is tough due to lateral sound hole brace and location of neck bolts. Enlarged hole in neck block before assembly and use alan key socket on socket wrench for adjustment. The tinted filler is tough to use to both fill and not leave surface residue.

If sfc cleaned well the pores tend to scoop out. If pores well filled the sfc residue is so hard to get off you wind up sanding through the stain and starting over. Definitely level the frets after assembly. Nice sound, good booming bass and strong mids in balance with high tones. Sounds way better than my previous instrument.

I haven't started building the kit yet. I'm going to take my time over this. If it's your first guitar build like me you'll need quite a few tools so keep this in mind if you're counting the pennies. Everything looks to be of exceptional quality and the DVD and book look to have enough information the get throught this exercise OK.

Good: Wood quality's better than the high-end guitars from the big boys. The 2 books and the DVD are good. Books could use some editing (will work for guitar parts, tools, or discounts - I majored in English at Eastern.) The instructions were good, though some things I thought were necessary weren't there. My "work-arounds" would fill those gaps nicely. It has been fun so far, and am looking forward to playing it for the first time. Bad: StewMac has NO LEFTY SUPPORT at all. When I get a lefty customer, it's all on me to make it work. Not cool at the prices on this stuff. Recommendations: Add lefty parts as an option, for no additional charge of course. Also, the price should include basic tools and tuners. Work-arounds: "Invented" weighting to clamp the flat braces. Had to convert the bridge to lefty. Made the peghead overlay into a pickguard. It looks cool, but was not easy to do. Will use the "how to blacken a peghead face" in the finishing book. One big instruction we need: What to do if something is off-center and due to "clamp creep" we don't notice it 'til the Titebond has dried. Those cam clamps are nice. I got a couple. I made 48 Spool clamps for around $9, so finally, please consider making this stuff affordable for the "little guy" that doesn't have huge cash reserves. Thanks

This is my second kit from Stemac. The first one was for my daughter and she is still amazed that I made it and it is her pride and joy. As with the first kit, the second kit's materials was first rate and the technical support from staff was exceptional. I am very proud of both guitars and look forward to building another. I wish all the people at Stewmac a very merry Christmas. God bless you and your families.

After years of reading books, articles, and web sites on guitar construction, I finally took the plunge and bought a kit. What a great way to learn by doing! I was very happy with the quality of the parts in the kit and with the directions.

If I could go back in time and talk to myself before building the kit, I would recommend that I get the bolt on neck instead of the dovetail neck. I got the dovetail joint to work, but it was very difficult for a first-time builder.

Another part of the kit that I thought was difficult was cutting the notch for the X-brace joint. I ended up making new X braces from scratch and leaving the area where the joint is rectangular instead of rounded over. I had to scrap the X brace that came with the kit because my joint was very loose.

Other than that, everything else was very enjoyable. I can't wait to start building my next guitar from scratch.

So this will be review number 1 for the kit guitar. This is the WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW NICE THE WOOD IS review. I got a great looking kit well packed and am sure I am about to have ALOT OF FUN. GREAT KIT STEWMAC!!! I will post pics and a review of the finished product later.