General
Model Number
SBK-10
Series
SB Style
Body Information
Body Material
Ash
Body Shape
SB Style
Body Finish
Sealed Unfinished
Neck Information
Neck Material
Maple
Neck Finish
Unfinished
Scale Length
25.5" / 648mm
Fingerboard Material
Rosewood
Fingerboard Radius
12"
Number of Frets
24
Frets
Medium Jumbo, Nickel Silver
Nut Width
42mm
Position Inlays
Acrylic Dot
Truss Rod
2-Way-Action
Truss Rod Nut
4 mm Hex
Hardware & Electronics
Finish
Black
Pickup Configuration
1 x HB, 2 x SC
Pickups
Ceramic Pickups
Controls
1V, 1T, 5-Way Toggle
Bridge
Locking Tremolo
Potentiometers
Full Sized Pots
Misc
Includes all mounting screws, strap buttons, and plates
Accessories
Includes
Hex Adjustment Keys & Instrument Cable
MG –
Great kit! Only way to get a headless guitar unless you are willing to spend thousands. Neck is super straight and decent quality. Body is shaped nice and routered good. Kit went together easy. Sound quality is actually…. very good (with after market quality strings). Sustain is blow your mind incredible. Very happy and play it daily. String action a little high, but will order proper wood shims for the neck, which is common adjustment for guitars. The only gripes I have is the wood grain/joints are a little crooked (I went with a natural finish so its just cosmetic). But you wouldn’t notice unless I pointed it out. It does look incredible. But this thing is definitely worth the price. And I have to emphasize that again…. it’s a great guitar… for the price. Don’t expect a $3000 Kiesel or Strandberg from it. Just build it and enjoy it. SoloMusic also had this sent to me within a week, so that was awesome. I have no regrets buying this guitar. I wouldn’t mind building another.
Chris A. Kuhnke (verified buyer) –
Impressive for the cost; very rewarding kit and worth the money and effort. Fast delivery and as advertised; only (small) issue is wiring diagram could be more ‘novice’ oriented……may just be me. Will definitely purchase more kits in the future. The time invested is definitely worth the end results. I will post pics later. No issues as for wood quality and construction; turned out really well for me. Thanks! Happy that it includes everything from solder to strings………………………..
mtrettin (verified buyer) –
Overall this was a pretty good kit, that went together nicely. The body was made from 3 pieces of wood and needed to be filled and sanded flat in a few areas that had divots (especially on one area on the edge of the guitar on one of the seams where the pieces of wood joined). I expected having to do this sort of thing on a project build like this and it overall was not a big deal. I planned on painting mine a solid color, so it didn’t matter to me, but the grain did not have a nice consistent pattern or color between the 3 pieces and as I said, I had to fill several areas so a translucent finish is probably out. I used my own pickups and did not test the ones that came with it, so I cannot speak for the quality of them, but they seemed pretty cheap (but who knows though, maybe they sound great). The bridge is serviceable, but not great, but it can be directly replaced with steinberger r-trem bridge, I used a J-custom r-trem style bridge in mine and it fit perfectly with no modifications needed. The headpiece is also not great and requires two different hex keys to change strings. There are a number of other nice headless headpieces out there that do not have the floyd rose nut style clamps but unfortunately, it cannot be directly replaced with steinberger style parts as the neck is a different size and is cut in such a way as to only accept this proprietary headpiece that seems to be made of low quality metals. I know you get what you pay for, but the option of upgrading with aftermarket parts would be nice. The neck pocket was too tight and needed a good amount of wood removed to get it to fit which again isn’t a big deal and totally fixable, but I am just mentioning these things so potential buyers can know the scope of what they may be getting into. The string action was also too high even with the bridge adjusted as low as it would go and needed a neck shim (again, not a big deal, but just FYI). The neck itself is actually a very nice shape and feels nice and thin, very easy to play. Not crazy thin like a Wizard neck or anything close to that, but also not thick like a les paul neck, it felt just right to me. This was a very fun build and the guitar turned out very nice in the end. So why the 3 stars? After about 3 months of playing this guitar with moderate use, many of the frets started to wear grooves into them. I leveled and crowned the frets properly before ever playing it and had it setup by a very reputable guitar tech in my area. Fast forward to today and I have had the guitar finished for 8 months and several of the frets have such deep indentations that the strings are starting to catch. Re-fretting this guitar is out of the scope of what I have tools/knowledge/experience for, and I haven’t been able to find a direct replacement neck anywhere online. I have owned many guitars and have built several other kit guitars and have never experienced this issue before. I admit that I am not a professional luthier, and I would even go as far as to say that there is a chance that there is something that I did incorrectly while building the kit that is causing extra wear on the frets, but I have never had this issue with previous kits that I have built.
Overall I was happy with this kit but just a summary of my suggestions for improvements/considerations:
-Use more durable fret wire
-Re-design the neck or headpiece in such a way that aftermarket headpieces can be used. Many people buy these kits to mod them, so help us out!
I hope this was helpful!
cmuellemann (verified buyer) –
I have bought quite a few kits from Solo. They all take work to some degree but generally they work out well. This headless guitar is a poor kit. Possibly Solo’s worst! There are no instructions on this flimsy headless bridge. I finally managed to find one video on all of You Tube that explained it. It is a cheesy bridge that takes a lot of work to use not to mention that the route for this bridge could have been at least 1/8th of an inch deeper so I didn’t have to go buy shims at Stew Mac just to get the strings at some sort of playable height. Setting intonation is a bear on this. 6 saddles only held in position by one very small locking side screw which they don’t give you an Allen for. When you unlock that side screw it is almost impossible to move a saddle without moving the others. An unbelievable amount of time spent doing this. This bridge is hokey at best. Totally unable to even think about using the tremolo. It is that unstable. The body was the only part of this kit I liked. The neck had to be fret leveled though the fret ends were good. I had to modify the neck to get it to fit in to the pocket. There was no forcing it. The neck was just too big for the pocket. A lot more time spent on that.
Electronics are pure Tinker Toy junk. I made my own with a Pure Tone jack, Bournes long shaft 500k pots, an Oak Grigsby 5 way switch and a real 0.22 uf Orange Drop capacitor instead of the Tick Tack one that cam with the kit. At least the control cavity was generous. Pickups. I had a SSH set I wanted to use but the routes don’t fit the single coils well and the Humbucker not at all. You would have to rout that some more and I was not about to mess with it. Unless you do you are stuck with the pickups on this. Actually due to the wiring harness I made they sound O.K.
None of the screws with this kit are hardened. Make sure you put Bee’s Wax on them to help them go in or you will be stripping out screw heads or snapping them off. I was able to find screws at Ace Hardware for all the screws on this guitar and those worked without any trouble.
I know what I’m doing ad this kit was nothing but trouble for me so if you have NO experience pass this one by. For all of my work I have a headless guitar that sounds and plays just O.K. Solo should consider dropping this kit as there is no payoff to completing it.