Where to Buy DIY Electric Guitar Kits

Where is the best place for you to buy a DIY electric guitar kit? If you are a beginning kit builder, you might use a search engine like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Maybe that’s even how you found this page! But if you are looking for a reliable and trustworthy source with a wide range of kit choices, there is one place you should start: Amazon.

Now, for full disclosure, I am an Amazon affiliate. I receive a small referral fee when you use one of my links. It does not affect the price you pay in any way. I also have affiliate agreements with most of the other links on this site, and often they pay higher referral fees than Amazon. So why would I recommend Amazon for your DIY electric guitar kit?

Simply put, Amazon is… well, Amazon. Amazon offers a broad selection of DIY electric guitar kits, as well as a ton of component parts – pickups, tuning machines, strings, you name it. Prices are competitive. Most of the time you can get them shipped free, and most of the time you can easily return any item you don’t want. And sellers on Amazon are required to adhere to Amazon’s policies.

My First Kit

When I bought my first DIY electric guitar kit, I was pretty apprehensive about it. I had been thinking about it for a while, but for me there were a few barriers.

For starters, I didn’t even know how to play an electric guitar. Oh, I’ve played acoustic guitar since my pre-teen years. And I’ve played electric bass for just about as long. I’d owned a few electric guitars in the past, but never got the hang of it and ultimately got rid of them.

Further, I didn’t know much about woodworking or wood finishing. Certainly I didn’t have any special tools, and a few home-built projects I had attempted looked… well, they just looked homemade. What if I sank money into a DIY electric guitar kit, and it ended up looking like my middle-school shop class project?

Or, what if I could make it look half decent, but it wasn’t playable? Not being an electric guitar player, how would I really even know? Would I embarrass myself by taking it to someone who did know how to play, only to confirm that I had built a piece of junk?

Then I happened upon an advertisement for DIY electric guitar kits in an online marketplace. The guy selling them was importing kits he spec’d from China (nearly all of them are) and was shipping them out of his garage. Turns out he was only about 30 miles from me! So I called him and scheduled a time when I could look at his kits first-hand and talk to him about them.

We talked about sanding, prep, paint, stain, oil, wipe-on poly and a host of other things, as well as how to assemble the guitar. He showed me a few that he had done himself, and I ended up buying a Jazz Bass kit. It was something I would be able to play when it was finished. I left with the confidence that I could make this thing look and sound pretty decent.

You might not be as fortunate as I was to have someone nearby who sells DIY electric guitar kits. That means you cannot look at them first and evaluate the quality. It means you don’t get to go over them all and pick out the one you want. And you will likely end up paying a shipping fee and waiting weeks before you get your kit.

That’s where buying through Amazon becomes an advantage.

You probably already buy things from Amazon. Maybe you are even an Amazon Prime member. So the experience of placing and completing an order is nothing new and a very easy thing to do. And you may have already used Amazon’s convenient no-hassle free return program when you had a problem.

What DIY Electric Guitar Kits Can You Get At Amazon?

There are several brands of DIY electric guitar kits sold through Amazon. Many of these brands can be purchased elsewhere as well, and some of them can even be purchased direct. Prices at Amazon could be the same, lower, or higher than they are through other sources. So if you are buying solely on price, shop around. The advantage with Amazon goes beyond price. Some things to consider are:

• Prime Member Advantages
• Free Shipping
• Fast Delivery
• Extended Warranty Protection
• Easy Returns (often free)
• Unbiased Product Reviews
• Quick and Easy Customer Service Access (chat, email, phone)
• Secure Payment Options, including Amazon gift cards and the Amazon Rewards credit card

When you purchase a DIY electric guitar kit through Amazon, you will almost always be working with a third-party seller. These third-party sellers are required to meet Amazon customer service standards and abide by Amazon policies. I have communicated directly with third-party sellers through the Amazon messaging system and have always received satisfactory answers and, when necessary, problem resolution.

Here are a few of the DIY electric guitar kit brands you can find on Amazon. You will probably recognize some of them, and others may not be familiar.

• Fistrock (formerly Bogart)
• Bexgears (the name in the instructions is Harley Benton)
• Leo Jaymz
• Heng Yee
• Solo

Besides complete DIY electric guitar kits, a huge selection of guitar parts are available at Amazon. In addition to generic, no-name parts (be careful what you buy – read the reviews), there are some notable brands of low and moderately priced parts available, as well as higher end brands.

• Musiclily (and Wilkinson)
• Bogart
• Guyker
• Alnicov

And for some higher-end parts:

• Fender
• StewMac

Amazon frequently offers “coupon” deals for DIY electric guitar kits where either a percentage or fixed amount is deducted at checkout. I have shown a few of these deals at the bottom of this site. These deals change frequently and without notice, so be sure to check Amazon to confirm. I try to keep these up-to-date.

Walmart

Just a couple of thoughts here about DIY electric guitar kits at Walmart. A search will render page after page of kits, and the first thing you notice is that many are the same. There are really only about a dozen or so different kits offered. And almost all of these, no matter what brand is shown, are Muslady kits. I built one, and though it was a challenging process, it turned out very nice. You can read about my Muslady experience here.

Of course, these are offered through third-party sellers just like Amazon. Communication is not nearly as easy and, in my experience, a delayed process (they only responded while I was asleep). Most DIY electric guitar kits from Walmart are returnable, usually just by taking them back to a Walmart store, which is very nice. You have to wonder, though, why the same kit sells for both $90 and $300 – and about every price point in between.

A word of caution is in order. Since items from off-shore third parties are offered at different prices, I always select the lowest price. Makes sense, right? In the last three months, I have had three orders cancelled by the vendor as unavailable, only to have it relisted by the same vendor at Walmart for a higher price. Walmart does nothing about this.

Why Amazon Instead of Buying Direct?

A while back, I attempted to purchase a kit from The Fret Wire. Their kits had been recommended to me as a high quality starter kit. After three attempts, I was unable to get anything shipped. The same kit was available through Amazon, at the same price, with a confirmed ship date and shipping from Amazon. It was available with Prime shipping and with free returns.

If you are highly experienced kit builder or luthier, these might not be the kits you are looking for. And if that is the case, you probably aren’t reading this blog post anyway. If you are looking for DIY electric guitar kits you can customize before purchasing them, your best bet is to contact one of the higher-end companies up front and buy direct.

If you are a beginner or intermediate DIY electric guitar kit builder looking for your first or next kit, give Amazon a look. Even if you don’t ultimately buy a kit from Amazon, you can still benefit from reading the reviews and experiences of other kit builders. I’ve even left a few reviews myself! Who knows, you may stumble across a kit or component you hadn’t considered before.

Before You Go…

One more thing. I said at the beginning I was an Amazon affiliate, as well as having affiliate agreements with other companies. If that interests you and you would like to learn more about affiliate marketing, check out Wealthy Affiliate. I’ve been a member there since 2015. It is where I learned how to create this site (and a few others). Maybe you can find a niche you are interested in among the thousands of categories and millions of products offered at Amazon, write about it, and make a few bucks. Wealthy Affiliate is a good place to start.