Solo GFK-10 DIY Electric Guitar Kit With Vibrato Trem

(9 customer reviews)

$ CAD 399.99

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SKU: GFK-10 Category: Electric Guitar Kits Brand:
Frequently Bought Together
$ CAD 129.99

Description

This DIY guitar kit has everything you need for building your own GF Style Electric Guitar With Maple Top. You will only need some basic tools and finishing supplies. This kit includes all parts and step-by-step instructions to build a complete, playable custom guitar. All challenging wood cutting, drilling and shaping has already been professionally done, as well as fret leveling and dressing.

Recommended tools: Solo Guitar Assembly Kit – Set Neck

Kit includes:

  • Basswood body with a poly sealant
  • Unfinished maple neck with Rosewood fingerboard
  • Threaded hex bushings (flat washers included)
  • Tuning machines
  • Truss Rod Cover
  • Strings
  • Top Pickguard
  • Strap Buttons
  • Neck Pickup on a mounting ring
  • Bridge Pickup on a mounting ring
  • Tune-O-Matic Bridge
  • Bigsby style trem
  • Pickguard
  • 3-Way Pickup Toggle Switch (includes knurled mounting nut, flat washer, and plastic Rhythm/Treble Ring-switchwasher)
  • Control Knobs
  • Jack (mounting nut and washer included)
  • Cord
  • Hex Wrench
  • Full size potentiometers (capacitors included for Tone Pots)
  • All mounting screws are included
  • Wires
IMPORTANT (in addition to our standard return policy): due to their nature kits can be returned only in virtually untouched condition and in original package.

Additional information

DIY Kit Information
Finish

Style

Body Information
Pickguard

Thickness

Body Material

Binding

Neck Information
Fretboard

Construction

Frets

Inlays

Scale Length

Thick Nut

Width Nut

Hardware and Electronics
Hardware Color

Selector Type

Tailpiece

Bridge

Controls

Electronics

Pickups

Tuners

Additional Information
Weight

11 lbs

9 reviews for Solo GFK-10 DIY Electric Guitar Kit With Vibrato Trem

  1. Pat Clark

    This was a lot of fun to put together. The nice wide fret-board is comfortable to my large hands. The vibrato works quietly and well. I did as much custom work to personalize it as I could, Walnut bound finger-rest, walnut heel cap. Dual “mud switches” instead of tone knobs. Hillbilly correct switch knobs. The roller bridge base covered the old stud holes and I pinned it. I custom cut and bound the headstock as well as bookmatched a walnut veneer and inlaid my personal emblem. Walnut truss rod cover.Custom paint and polish, buff and shine. It’s one of the best guitars I have played. Loads of fun to build.

  2. Roy Epkenhaus (verified owner)

    Guitar arrived in a few short days. Was well packaged inside the case. I did notice a crack in the wood on the interior of the guitar but this did not penetrate through to the back side. I will fix this so that it does not get any worse. The overall guitar was fairly rough and will need some extensive sanding to get nice a smooth. I am looking at simply putting on a clear coat with maybe a light natural dye colour to bring out the wood grain a little more. The pick guard was not cut very straight and the beveled edge was poorly shapen. The pick guard will require some filing to correct. As the description noted, the frets on both the top and bottom side of the fret board are sharp and also will need to be filed down. The case looks to be very well made and the guitar fits nice and snug. I plan on doing a nice ebony inlay into the head stock to add personalization to the guitar. Overall I am quite happy with what has been provided to assemble albeit the instructions could have had a few photos included to assist in the assembly.

  3. rhorwath

    I’ve just received this kit, and I won’t be building it unto after the first of the year, (2018). However, I am considered a Master Woodworker, and this will be my first guitar kit. At this point, I can tell you that the kit arrived in perfect shape. I opened the kit and inspected all the parts included, and found no defects or damage from shipment. All the hardware is intact, and appears to align with the pre-drilled holes. The neck and body is a tight fit, maybe will perform a bit of hand sanding to allow for glue flow out. From a woodworkers standpoint, the kit is very nice, and I look forward to continued research and assembly of the guitar. I will update this review during construction of the kit.

  4. rhorwath

    Well, consider this an update to my previous review, as I can’t figure out how to add to the review. The GFK-10 kit is complete, and, I must say, I learned a lot about guitar building. I could not be happier with the way the guitar turned out, and, if I could, I would attach a picture or two. The neck settled into place with no problems, but the finishing was the real time suck. You have to be patient to get the lacquer to turn out just right, with almost a factory finish and reflection. The addition of the electronics went without a hitch, using mono-filament fishing line and a spring hook. I covered the bottom of the tremolo tailpiece with thin adhesive backed nylon to keep the finish protected during installation, and everything lined up perfect. Just a little more work on the frets, and I’ll start playing again. Overall, as a first kit, and being a master woodworker, I am totally impressed with this kit. I’m hoping Santa brings me the SG kit with the flamed maple top next! This has been a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again!

  5. tobias.tschiedl (verified owner)

    Built this in May, I think I can now give a relatively thorough review.

    – Neck/Frets fine, straight and I was positively surprised how playable, although
    1. I can’t set the action very low or I get buzzes on the middle strings’ 13th frets. Fwiw, I’ve installed a .012″ gauge set with wound G; this may play out differently with different string gauges.
    2. Don’t bother with the plastic nut that comes with it: Mine was way too high in relation to the frets and didn’t sound great. It’s also slotted for lighter gauges, but my point is that the bottom of the slots (rather than their width) was still almost 1 mm above fret height. I initially sanded it down a bit and deepened the slots. But later on I replaced it with a tusq nut (6060 is the one that fits, although it will also require some sanding), and that was a huge improvement both in tuning stability and sound. Best to replace that nut first thing before you finish the guitar…
    3. I’m not quite sure what wood the fretboard is made of. The website states “poplar” which would be quite unusual…

    – Neck joint – This one looked a bit sketchy at first: The end grain in the neck pocket was very coarse and not particularly dense (i.e., small areas of about 1-3 square mm where the would of the pocket would not touch the wood of the neck). At the time I decided to ignore it, and the guitar does sound ok… still not sure if a luthier would consider this an acceptable joint.

    – Tuning pegs turned out to be surprisingly reliable (once the new nut was installed).

    – Bridge: oh well, not great, because
    1. the stock ABR bridge has a very noisy retainer wire. My inelegant solution: Throw away retainer wire, put little pieces of a rubber band at the end of the screws so they fit more tightly and their threads. No noise now.
    2. more importantly: Turns out the bridge posts (or rather their bushings/studs) are not entirely parallel, i.e. one of the posts slants inward. Now I don’t think this is down to my admittedly very amateurish workmanship: I can’t imagine that you’d be able to tap them into their holes at any angle other than that defined by the holes themselves, so the holes must have been drilled off spec in the first place.
    The stock bridge fit on the posts anyway, but unfortunately not the one I had hoped to replace it with. No idea what I can do about this 🙁

    – Bigsby: Fine for all I can tell, had to replace the locking nut with two normal nuts so it didn’t loosen.

    – Electronics: Pickups are just utterly generic humbuckers, which is what I expected. (Meanwhile have replaced them with Filtertrons). The pots are cheap (also what I expected), and the caps for the tone pots are probably not the ideal value for Humbuckers, the sweep seems rather uneven. I’ll try smaller values at some point.

    All in all, I do think you get more or less what you pay for with this kit, but the thing with the bridge studs is really annoying because it limits the options for upgrading the hardware. (Next thing I’ll do is replace the pots/caps.)

    That said, with a decent nut and decent pickups, the guitar plays and sounds great. Just not super professional quality, but would you really expect that for this price?

  6. andreglenn9

    My wife purchased this kit for me for Christmas. (Solo Guitars, contact me and I can give you my wife’s name if you would like to verify the purchase)

    Upon receiving it, I have to say that overall I am impressed with the quality of the build. My wife also ordered the hardshell case at the same time, so the kit was actually packed into the guitar case and then both were shipped together. One thing about that, whoever put the kit in the case, wasn’t careful about fitting the neck into the neck joint. The laminate on one of the sides of the body had started to slightly tear due to the neck having not been placed into the neck pocket carefully. Its a good thing that I decided to not wait until Christmas to open the box.

    For the price point, I can’t really complain about the workmanship. All in all, the manufacturer did a good job on the build. There are a few imperfections that hopefully the manufacturer will address for the future, and I’ll get to those in the midst of my review. But its a pretty good kit.

    Pros:
    Very good build quality on the exterior of the body. No nicks, scratches, dents, or blemishes.
    Excellent binding job on the body and the sides of the fretboard
    Very good build quality on the fretboard and the neck
    Neck fits firmly into the neck pocket
    Glue-line where the sides meet at the tail of the guitar is clean and small
    No signs of excess glue on the body
    Three-ply pickguard with a Tortoise-shell facing
    High quality hardshell case

    Cons:
    There are no kerfed linings inside the body
    The neck pocket is chewed up
    Headstock not cut symmetrically
    Nut appears to sit on top of the neck binding
    Binding on the bottom of the fretboard is sloppy

    In short:
    This kit is a good start to what will be a very nice guitar when finished. I highly recommend it.

    Details:
    Neck – this is a well made neck. The fretboard is clean, the inlays are all sanded level with the fretboard, there are no glaring gaps around the inlays, the frets are in solidly, and they are dressed pretty well. I’ll have to do a little dressing of my own, but nothing different from what I’d do if I were buying an already finished guitar from one of those big-box music stores. The Solo site currently says that the fretboard is Blackwood, and you really can’t tell that its not Rosewood. No truss-rod adjustment was needed as the neck arrived straight. The binding on the sides of the fretboard was well done. (Are those side dots painted on?) All of the frets were properly seated on the binding. The binding on the bottom of the fretboard is a little sloppy as there is a visible gap between the binding and the fretboard. I’ll have to fix that. The neck itself is comfortable in my hands. The scarf joint is a bit prominent in the raw wood, but hopefully I can hide that when I stain/finish the neck.

    Headstock – I like the classical design, it reminds me of the shape of my 60’s-era Guild acoustic. Unfortunately though, it is not symmetric. It seems that there must have been a slip or something while the top of the headstock was being cut, because the curve of the upper left corner of the headstock does not match the curve of the upper right corner. Maybe that was intentional? Its not the end of the world, as I can just re-shape the top of the headstock, but its slightly annoying. While I was inspecting the headstock, I did notice that it is actually not one piece of wood. There is the bottom of the headstock, which is scarf-jointed to the rest of the neck, but then there’s a 1/4 inch plate of wood that is glued to the top of the headstock, similar to how on certain guitars they glue a veneer on top of the headstock that contains inlays and the such. I’m not quite sure why the need for this multi-piece construction, but I assume it has something to do with making the truss rod access easier to create. Luckily, once the headstock is covered with finish, it won’t be noticeable. Speaking of the truss-rod, the outer nut seems to dig into the side of the opening. Hopefully that doesn’t turn out to be a problem. This is a bit of a nit-pick, but the image on the Solo Guitars site shows a bell-shapped, multi-ply, truss-rod cover. The cover in my kit is a triangular piece of black plastic. Clearly not a big deal, but…

    Nut – definitely has to go but not a surprise. As expected, its an inexpensive plastic nut. It will be replaced with a Tusq nut. It is kind of odd to see that the side binding has been extended so that the nut sits on top of the binding and what appears to be a paper-thin piece of the fretboard rather than on the actual neck. I assume that the strip of blackwood that I am seeing under the nut is actually part of the fretboard as opposed to being just a wood spacer. I will find out when I remove the existing nut (which I hope doesn’t break that thin piece of wood if it is indeed part of the fretboard)

    Neck Joint – this is the most concerning part of the build. Whatever wood it is that was used for the block that he neck joint was cut out of is not of good quality. The wood is extremely light, i.e. not dense, and 2 of the 3 sides looks like Finlandia Swiss Cheese given that they are so full of holes/cavities. Either the wood is full of air pockets, or the router bit used to cut the pocket was extremely dull and tore the wood in this manner. Whatever the cause is, the pocket is chewed up and I’m going to have to see if I can do anything to clean it up before gluing the neck in. There is a slight gap between the neck and the right side of the body, but hopefully I can hide any resulting glue line when I apply the finish.

    Body – At first sight, I was impressed with how well the body was constructed (excluding the neck pocket). The top, rear, and sides do not have any dents or cracks, and the figuring of the wood is reasonable for the price point. The seam at the tail of the guitar where the sides meet is small and there isn’t excess glue at the joint, so it was well done. The binding on both the top and the rear is well done. It is clean, there are no gaps, and there doesn’t appear to be any excess glue on the surfaces. The various holes for the pickups, pots, bridge posts, and switch were done pretty cleanly (they left the little wood pieces resulting from the routing hanging in some of the holes. I’ll have to sand those off).

    The picture of the body on the website clearly shows a kerfed lining inside of the body, but in the body that I received, there is no kerfed lining anywhere inside of the body. I just see a line of glue between the sides of the body and the top and bottom of the body. I’m not sure whether they forgot the kerfed lining in my build or whether that is how they are building them now. It is disappointing nonetheless. I can’t properly retro-fit a kerfed lining without pulling the top or rear off and I don’t want to do that. Maybe there are no kerfed linings because they are thinking that the block of wood that is used for the bridge posts will keep the top and rear from collapsing or coming apart from the sides? Maybe the manufacturer thinks that because the sides are a laminate, they are stiff enough? I don’t know. But the point of a kerfed lining is not just stability of the joint between a side and a face of the guitar. The kerfed lining makes the sides stiffer, which means that when the soundboard vibrates, less vibrational energy is lost to the sides, and thus the soundboard has more vibrational energy to work with and convert to sound. Which leads to a guitar that produces more sound. I guess that doesn’t matter if you’re using pickups, but it does mean that when this guitar is assembled and played acoustically, it will not sound as good as it could have sounded if it had stiffer sides. Still, for the price point, this is a pretty nice looking body.

    I can’t comment on the electronics because I am going to replace all of it with higher quality parts. Likewise I am replacing the hardware that came with the kit so I can’t really comment on it either. Though the Bigsby-style tremolo seems well made, as do the tuning machines. The pickguard is a nice three-ply piece with a Tortoise- shell facing.

    So in short, this is a very nice kit. As expected with such a kit, there is some touch-up work that one will need to do in order to produce an instrument that sounds and plays well. I’m fully confident that I will be quite happy with the resulting guitar once I am finished with it. I would have given this kit 5-stars if not for the lack of a kerfed lining, and the minor annoyances such as the uneven headstock, sloppy binding on the end of the fretboard, and chewed up neck pocket.

    This kit is a great start to building a nice L-5 style guitar and I recommend it to anyone.

  7. awwint

    WHY , Buy any where else ;; the support is great; ; Started my build ,the bridge missing ,Just a phone call . now i have a bridge,;;NOW I will build my GFK-10 into something amazing with SOLO’ s help

  8. mgarand61 (verified owner)

    the first kit ever. goodnquality for the price. lots of fun to build and lots of fun to play.
    had to replace the tuning nuts, not stable enough for a bigsby.

  9. PAUL BROOKS (verified owner)

    GFK -10 REVIEW
    The kit arrived ( in good condition ) within a week of ordering including a weekend, so full marks for delivery. Inspection of the kit showed the neck and fretboard to be in excellent condition, very smooth frets with no sharp edges. The heel fitting to the body was a bit of an issue, very tight and quite rough on one side requiring a fair bit of sanding / filing to make it fit into it’s slot. The fitting angle of the heel itself to the body resulted in a gap between the fretboard and the body. Subsequent inspection of the body slot showed a significant difference in depth from one side to the other, this will again require a some work to level it up and make it fit, but I’m pretty sure it can be made to work.
    The jack plug hole was also roughly drilled and too large, making the jack plug and washer almost able to be pulled through the hole.
    Having said all of the above, I have to say I am very pleased with the kit and with SOLO guitars ( Scott’s ) responses to my emails regarding the issues. Initially suggesting to replace the kit, which I didn’t want to get into as I wanted to get on with the build, and also suggesting to send me a jack plug plate from a Les Paul style jack fitting to compensate the hole problem, which I did accept. This worked out very well and I think looks better than the original design anyway. I’m currently still in the build stage, sanding and staining the body, so there’s a fair way to go yet. I’ll probably write a follow up once it’s complete.
    This is my second kit from SOLO, and my third kit overall ( Strat from elsewhere and Tele kit from SOLO ). It’s important for any prospective kit builder to realise that there will always be a requirement for some fitting work and be prepared to do this. The kits are generally well made but due to the production processes used I don’t think we can expect perfection in everything, unless you want to pay a lot more for them. Most of the issues can be overcome with a little work.
    That being said, SOLO have always been fair and helpful in their customer support and I certainly would recommend them. If you just want to buy a cheap guitar there’s plenty out there, but it’s much more fun and satisfying to build your own and make it unique.

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