The Bex Gears kit comes complete and ready to paint and assemble. A light sanding on the body followed by a few coats of your favorite color of paint, and you could have a functioning guitar in a couple of days. The neck came pre-finished, and I decided to leave it exactly as it was because it looks so good. The Hardware is decent enough, but you could replace it easily enough if you wanted to. I did some extra work to mine, and haven't finished it yet, but if it sounds as good as it's starting to look, I will be 100% satisfied!

The kit came well packaged and the parts for the assemblies were individually bagged. One thing I didn't notice was that one of the tuners was incorrect in that the screw tab came out the differently and didn't allow the tuners to align. I emailed them the issue and they responded right back and promised to send the correct one out the next day. I have not yet received it, but has only been a few days.
The instructions were in understandable english with clear photos and overall pretty well done. I will say they used more than one guitar for the photos and that could be confusing to some, as they use a vintage
strat routed body in one picture and a HSH style in another .
Two minor complaints - the body did not come with the hole drilled to hang it when finishing and the placement and installation of the string trees was not really covered.
Finishing the body-
There are many YouTube videos on how to finish the body, but if you are not equipped and experienced and opt to try for a factory finish beware. Between the grades of sandpaper, OSHA masks, volatile chemicals, and layers of finish to put down you can spend a lot of time and money. Different paints for different parts of the process may include vinyl sealer, primer, a sanding sealer, several coats of enamel paint or lacquer, and a couple of coats of a gloss topcoat will get you started. But wait, there's more! Next you get into the final sanding. buffing and polishing of the clearcoat for that mirror finish. If you use rattle cans for this it gets very expensive very quickly. When you total all this up you can easily double the original price of the guitar kit. But, if you are patient and meticulous, you will have a guitar finish you can really be proud of.
When it is complete I will probably update with comment on the sound and play-ability.

I've built quite a few guitars from scratch, this was my first kit guitar. I usually use top shelf components for my builds, so I wasn't expecting much from this kit. I was expecting to have to do a lot of work to make this kit go together. I'm not averse to that, I have the woodworking skills. But I was pleasantly surprised at how easily this kit went together.

All the holes were drilled in the correct places, the body just needed some sanding and finish, everything else just bolted on. I didn't even bother with the tuners that come with it as I had a set of Fender locking tuners laying around from a previous build. I did use the stock pickups though, just to see how they sound. I was pleasantly surprised here too. They actually sound pretty good! I may swap them out in the future, but the stock pickups will do just fine until then. My kit came with 500k pots, which I thought was an odd choice for single coils. I was expecting it to sound dark and muddy, but to my surprise it sounds just like a strat should.

I've never been a huge fan of soldering, so I dig the fact that the electronics all just snap together with quick connect plugs. There was just one bit of soldering - connecting the bridge ground wire to the tremolo claw. In terms of wiring they really did make it as easy as possible.

I didn't really look at the instructions, but my kit did come with them. The neck was straight right out of the box, and the frets were halfway decent as well. The fret ends are relatively smooth, and the frets themselves just need a little polishing. Checking the frets with a fret rocker revealed there are some high frets, but there are no dead spots when the guitar is strung up.

The only two things I feel I need to do to make this guitar playable is to replace the plastic nut with a bone nut and polish the frets, that's it!

As a guitar builder, I'm blown away by the value for the money here. I couldn't even buy the raw materials to build this guitar from scratch for what this kit costs. And while the hardware isn't top shelf, it's a strat, so it's simple to upgrade.

One tip I can give for assembling this kit - for any screws that you might ever want to remove for any reason (to swap out pickups or tuners, etc), put a little bit of paste wax on the screw - it helps the screw go in nice and easy. Using a ceramic tip screwdriver also helps save the head of the screw.

All in all this is a fantastic kit for the money. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one. Come to think of it, I have always wanted to build an SG"¦"¦.

Ridiculous deal, each one plays like a 4 or $500 instrument.

My 1st kit, and 1st Stratocaster. Do not buy that to save $$. The provided electronics, tuners and strings are not rock-bottom dirt-cheap quality, but it is far from being satisfactory.
If you want to get the best bang for your bucks, get a Yamaha Pacifica. It is a wonderful instrument for the $$, and if you do not like it, you can resell it and get most of your money back.

However, if you want to have fun and learn, that kit is great. You will need tools, sandpaper, paint, wood sealant and wood stain, and some time and energy. The result will be OK, not great.

The following applies to the kit I have received:
All the screw holes are pre-drilled close enough (to me) to where they need to be
The neck and body fit is very loose with a very visible gap, so you will need your woodworker skills here
The neck required frets adjustments, a few were not installed deep enough
The frets were well trimmed, and no work was needed here like with cheap Rogue Electric guitars (paid my Rogue $69)
The neck was straight and not twisted, and the neck wood looks good and is smooth. It required a significant amount of fine sanding to remove the coat and get the wood stain to take.
The body was flawless, it did not require any other prep than a fine sanding before I started to paint.
Assembly is very easy, I did not need instructions, but they were provided, and there are good youtube videos on this topic.
The tuners are OK, they work and the guitar stays relatively well tuned in.
Installing the plate with the electronics was done without carving away more wood from the body, which was cleanly carved (they use a router and templates, the templates were not worn out)
One easy soldering was required
I did not use the provided string, I went direct with better quality light gauge electric guitar strings.
A whammy bar is provided, but the guitar does not keep its tuning so well if you use it ...
The switch works great, and I had to lightly adjust the height of the pickups.
I was able to set a low easy-to-play action without much buzzing. There are videos for that on youtube. Look for "GCH Guitar Academy", he is awesome. This action preparation and setup is the most important step, at least to me.

Did I have fun working on it? Yes!
Do I like the end result? Not really, because I have a better Yamaha Pacifica, so there is no urge feeling for me to grab this guitar.
It does a good job as a beginner guitar, and I will gift that guitar to a friend who wants to start playing. The action makes it very playable. The sound is not really recordable.

Can it be improved? Yes but, imho, it is not making any financial sense to do so.