PANGO Music is a guitar and guitar kit manufacturer located in Weifang in eastern China. DIY electric guitar kits are sold through their website, GuitarKit.shop. They claim to be the “top guitar factory in China,” making kits for other brands as well as their own. What can you expect from a PANGO Guitar Kit Shop DIY kit? Should you consider buying one? I decided to give it a try.
My PANGO Guitar Kit Shop Purchase
In my search for a good ES335 style kit, I came across what appeared to be great selection on the GuitarKit.shop website. For my kit, I chose one with a flamed maple top, maple fingerboard with trapezoidal inlays, and all gold hardware (these kits are offered with and without hardware). I placed the order on December 19, 2022.
The price of the kit was $168 USD and the shipping cost from China was $25. They did not collect sales tax, so the grand total was $193 USD. That was comparable or maybe a little lower than other kits I had considered. And though their website says they accept a variety of payment methods, the only thing I saw at checkout was PayPal.
According to their website, by sharing my shopping experience on Facebook I would be eligible for a $15 refund (they no longer accept Facebook posts now). Of course, I complied and sent them the Facebook link the next day. The refund was issued and showed up through PayPal on December 23. Shipping time was estimated at 25 days, meaning it would arrive by January 13, 2023. To my surprise, it arrived a few days early on January 11. So far, so good.
Unboxing The PANGO Guitar Kit Shop Kit
The kit arrived by UPS. It appeared to be packaged well, a box within a box. When I opened the inside box, I noticed immediately that this guitar kit was really crammed into the packaging. This box was actually much too small for the kit I had received.
Some higher end DIY electric guitar kits use Styrofoam packaging that has been cut out for the body, with other individual cutouts for the neck and components. Other kits use three individual interior boxes with lids – one for the body, one for the neck, and one for the components. And lower-end economy kits often have just three tray-type boxes without lids. Unfortunately, this kit manufacturer had used the cheapest packaging method, and they even had to cut the sides of the interior tray boxes in order for the body to fit. The cut out cardboard pieces were still in the box. The neck was longer than the neck tray, and only went in if placed fret side down. This PANGO Guitar Kit Shop kit came in cheap packaging that had to be cut to make it fit. It was really worse than some of the inexpensive Muslady products I have ordered.
I carefully laid out all of the parts to inspect them. There were no visible imperfections on the body or neck, and the neck heel fit nicely in the neck pocket. This should be a 24.75-inch scale, but from the nut to the 12th fret measured a little short of 12.375-inches. The distance to the holes for the Tune-O-Matic style bridge was also just a little shorter than the StewMac calculator, so hopefully this will all work out OK in the end.
Even though the pickups were packaged separately from the rest of the components, there are still some scratches on the gold covers. I will attempt to buff these out when I install them. It would have been nice if they had a protective film over them for shipping. As for the rest of the components, everything seems to be present. I say “seems to be” because no parts list is included.
There are also no instructions. After the order was placed, I received an email with relatively useless “instructions” – a PDF of a photo-copied book about making electric guitars from scratch. Of course, the copyright page wasn’t included; I hope they have permission from the publisher to do this. Fortunately this is not my first rodeo and I don’t anticipate any assembly problems. If you want or need instructions, go to a reputable site like Solo and download instructions from there (in this case, their ESK-35 instructions and wiring diagram).
Problems With The Flamed Maple Top
The packaging issues may be an indication of poor quality, but so far they have just been an inconvenience. The first real problem I encountered involved the flamed maple top on this kit. I chose to use Keda wood dye to stain the maple veneer top, using a mixture of blue and black for the first pass that will be partially sanded off. That needed to be done carefully, as the top is a very thin veneer rather than a cap.
After sanding, I applied the first round of dye. For the most part, it went on flawlessly. But the seam down the middle of the guitar where the booked maple veneer is joined was a problem. Perhaps it was not split and separated properly, or maybe too much glue was used. Whatever the cause, there is a thin jagged line down the middle that will not take the dye.
I have encountered this problem with glue twice before, both times on cheap Muslady tops. You can read my experience with that in my Muslady review. The first Muslady kit body had glue bleed issues around the binding, but not the middle joint. Respectfully, the manufacturer/distributor sent me a replacement body. However, the replacement was worse than the first one, and it did have glue bleed at the center joint. I did not pursue it any further, as Muslady is generally considered a lower-end/lower-quality product. You can see how I used a spray burst to hide the glue at the binding and at the bottom of the joint of this replacement part in my post about fixing or hiding blemishes. Since it had a hard-tail bridge, that covered the rest of the joint problem.
Unfortunately every part of the top of this ES335 will be visible (as I do not intend to install the pickguard). So, hiding the joint is not an option. I contacted PANGO and received this unbelievable reply (unedited – you can see the language difficulties in our communications):
Good day! the veneer is not the key, which can judge a kit quality. we can not agree with your opinions. we always tell our customers that the veneer on our kits is thin, but surely ok. as we know, most guitar factories use same veneer wood supplier around our factory. for this issue, we recommend that you can use a painting or brush to draw the wood grain.
Let me make sure I understand this: The veneer top, the most visible part framing the finished guitar, does not reflect the quality of the kit? I call B.S.! Further, PANGO has acknowledged that their veneer top is no different than the veneer top on the cheap kit I purchased from Walmart for less than $100 delivered. And to add insult to injury, I can fix this problem by using a paintbrush to “draw” the missing parts of the wood grained pattern in this dyed top (and mind you, I am expected to draw over the glue that won’t accept the finish in the first place). More B.S.! At least the distributor of the cheap Muslady kit attempted to rectify the situation by replacing the defective part.
I am resourceful, and I will figure out something to make this work. I might have even accepted a refund of some amount to forego the flamed maple top and just paint it solid – something I am not yet very good at doing. Instead, PANGO has pretty much blown me off, said it isn’t an issue, and left me stuck with an inferior, defective product. For this reason alone, AxeKit.com advises NOT TO PURCHASE A KIT FROM PANGO GUITAR KIT SHOP.
A Better Option For DIY Electric Guitar Kits
In my post Where To Buy DIY Electric Guitar Kits I give several reasons why you should consider purchasing your kit at Amazon or possibly Walmart. Sellers at these large online retailers are held to higher standards, and if you have a problem you have Amazon (or Walmart) to back you up. And if the product is defective or just isn’t what you thought it was, you can almost always easily return it for a full refund. You can also buy kits through Reverb, though I have not personally done this.
Fistrock, Leo Jaymz, and BexGears along with several others offer some top quality kits through Amazon. Yes, these kits are manufactured in China. Who knows, they may even come from the same factory that makes the PANGO kits. But each of these companies, selling through Amazon, stands behind their product and provides great customer service. They have to, or Amazon won’t keep them. And if there is a problem, Amazon will go to bat for you.
There are other reputable DIY Electric Guitar Kit distributors selling direct in North America as well. AxeKit.com recommends Solo, based in Canada. They offer outstanding products and customer service.
Stay Tuned…
Come back for Part 2 and find out how (or if) I was able to fix this.
UPDATE: You can read my final review of the PANGO ES-335 style kit here.