Build Your Own Guitar Kits – Are BYO And DYI Guitar Kits Good For Beginners? Guitar Question #19
2,807 views · Published 21 September 2015 · 3:18 · Indexed 12 November 2026
Channel: Ulrich Peise · 2015 · Education
Thanks for watching my video “Build Your Own Guitar Kits – Are BYO And DYI Guitar Kits Good For Beginners?” I think it’s actually pretty neat. I like the idea to build your own acoustic or electric guitar. But as I admitted in my video, I actually never bought - well, as a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen – a so called DYI or BYO guitar kit myself. Nonetheless, I’ve been getting this question quite frequently with regard to what I think about these kits. Usually, it’s guitar beginners or folks who are interested in learning the instrument who ask if they’d be better off buying a ready to play guitar vs. a do it yourself guitar kit. So, based on what I just shared with you, once more, I am not qualified to give general advice here regarding whether it makes sense to buy a BYI guitar kit. I never had one myself. However, with that being said, I do believe that a DYI guitar kit is in all likelihood not the best option for a guitar starter. It has nothing to do with me being concerned about you not being able of putting the different guitar components together. I’m sure these kits come with manuals or you can watch demo videos online which will makes this exercise pretty straight forward. What I am concerned about, though, is the fact that a guitar beginner simply doesn’t’ have the knowledge and experience to take care of things such as action, intonation, etc. So, in other words, putting the bits and pieces of a do it yourself guitar kit together is one part of the story, but then making sure the guitar is properly set up and fine-tuned, that’s a completely different thing. After all, your instrument should play, feel and sound like a guitar once you’re done with the assembly. This is admittedly not the best analogy but anyway. Would you rather buy a car that’s ready for you to drive, or would you prefer to get all the individual parts, putting the whole thing together and then hope that your vehicle will start and perform the way it’s supposed to. I’m sure you get my point. Once more, I am talking about this subject from a guitar perspective. Clearly things like building a guitar online, building a virtual guitar or getting a build your own guitar kit might be very viable options for people who have gained some experience on the instrument. But for someone who’s just starting out on the guitar, I just have my doubts. Also, I can’t picture any of my students wanting to spend hours or days putting their guitar together, dealing with the setup before they can eventually lay hands on the instrument and play. They are eager to get started and don’t want to tinker with a screwdriver and hammer. In sum: building your own electric our acoustic guitar might be a great thing, but if you are a guitar beginner, you might want to put this on the backburner until you have some general knowledge and experience. In the near future, I will be getting myself a DYI / BYO guitar kit, just because I’m curious. I’ll then do another review.
