Grizzly Tools Western Steel String Kit
Grizzly Industrial, Inc.
This kit was at first difficult to take seriously from the standpoint of “building your own guitar.” However, it made a good beginner’s guitar! (With a couple of important modifications to the neck joint.)
They’ve taken all the fun out of it: The building of the body (to me) is the fun, challenging part of putting a guitar together. In the other kits, depending on who made them and how you order them, the body construction includes almost every step taken by a luthier building from scratch. The only important steps left out are wood selection, the bending of the sides, joining of the back and top, the rosette, and sometimes the raw brace shaping. With those other kits, you get to have some fun, make fundamental changes, and actually construct a guitar that will have a certain sound and personality — even if you don’t know exactly what it will be until the guitar is completed. When you’re done, you know that it’s actually something you built yourself.
With this not-really-a-kit, all of that fun and fulfillment is gone. You open the box, and bada boom bada bing: There’s your guitar! All built. Braces done. Routing done. Binding done. All glued together, all sanded. No excitement or anticipation whatsoever. I’m not even looking forward to “building” it.
INSIDE the guitar is where we’ll start, since that is the
part they don’t let us fiddle with. These pix aren’t the
match of Frank Ford’s over at www.frets.com, but they’ll do.
The bracing appears to be either spruce or basswood,
and it is clearly cut on a CNC and not touched by any
human hands except probably to put it in a vacuum
press and glue it down. Some standard kind of glue is
used. The unkerfed lining is a solid strip of basswood
with inlet holes for the ends of the braces.
The inside of the guitar is pretty cleanly built; but, it
only cost $90 for the kit. Inside, it’s much like the “Rogue”
guitar I got at Musicians Friend for $66 including
shipping. I expected it would sound about the same, too.
But, I was quite surprised; see the bottom of the page.
I wondered about the density of the basswood back. It
is “solid,” but I wondered how good it might look if I
could see into it. Wild idea. I translit it with a 500-watt
bulb, and then did the same with my mahogany Taylor. The kit
basswood is thin and inconsistent; the Taylor mahogany is
thicker and more consistent in density. I don’t know if
this means much. Wood experts? Email me!
On To The Body of the Kit. It’s a Dreadnought body,
standard size. The top is sitka spruce, and I am satisfied
that it is solid. The sides and back are basswood.
This species is not reputed to be a particularly good
tonewood for acoustics, but it is apparently thought
to be pretty good for some solid-body electrics. (Grizzly
also sells electric solid body kits, so they must have a
bunch of basswood around to use for these.) The wood is
sanded to about 220. The installed binding is either
plastic or fiber.
The neck joint of this guitar indicates that it isn’t
going to be left to your grandchildren, unless you
augment it with a bolt, which I did. As you can
see, the only thing that will hold the neck and body
together will be four 1/8” dowels, each about an inch
long, and the glue. (That was why I dry fitted it and
drilled a bolt into it through the neck block.) A truss rod
is included, and a truss rod wrench; the channel is
cut into the top. The truss rod, etc., works just fine.
It arrives in a standard box ... in this case,
smashed ... oh, I guess UPS did that part.
(Good thing it was protected by peanuts! Do
you think UPS would accept that as an
argument if I made an insurance claim on
something I shipped through them? Probably
not!) But, the UPSers didn’t really look at the inside
box, which was smashed. If this had been
a nice kit I’d ordered from LMI’s Kit Wizard,
I would have hit the roof. Luckily, there wasn’t
any damage to the contents.
In the box you find the pre-made guitar body,
explained above. It’s amazing how little the box
has in it, when the body is already assembled.
They save the “builder” lots of time, and take away
from the buyer every opportunity to actually learn
something about guitars.
Then, there’s the neck, fretboard
and truss rod. The neck appears
to be maple; all shaped and
smoothed, the peghead with
tuner holes drilled and veneer on
the front. Everything seems to fit
pretty well. The fretboard is fretted
and holes are drilled for the
position buttons.
In a little bag is the rest of the guitar. A vinyl
stick-on pickguard, a rosewood-looking bridge,
six chrome tuners, a truss rod wrench and a
cheap set of strings. (A rosette water decal, too,
which I tried to put on, and totally messed up.)
In an even smaller bag is the rest. A hollow plastic
nut (which I replaced with bone), plastic bridge (which
I also replaced), plastic pins, fretboard side-
dot material, bushings for the tuners, white
fretboard dots, and a major structural component
of the instrument: Four 1/8” x 1” dowels. These
align the neck to the body, and once
glued, keep it all aligned while strings exert 165
lbs of pull on the whole assembly. (It is surprisingly
accurate when done; with an added bolt, it is quite
secure.)
Last, but not least, is the instruction manual. It is
actually a very good guide to constructing this kit.
It is over 30 pages long, most of which is devoted
to actual construction, with photos, diagrams, etc.
It would be difficult to make a mistake.
Bottom Line
This kit, though it made a pretty good beginner or “campfire” guitar, is without much educational value: It teaches nothing about guitar building, woodworking, or any other skills that go into creating a guitar. Well, some gluing skills (maybe), and some finishing skills. Its cost is less than other kits, but it’s just not as satisfying as actually building something yourself. You don’t get any “bragging rights” at all, since it’s all built for you. Too bad Grizzly doesn’t just leave it unassembled, or at least offer the option.
But, I built it ... no journal on this one, but the story ends below.
Bill Cory
7/16/06
The Grizzly Details! ...
Danged if this already-half-built kit didn’t make a pretty good sounding guitar! Specs on the guitar: It’s a full-size dreadnought, 25.4” scale length, 1 3/4” nut width, string spread at saddle 2 1/8”, basswood body, solid sitka top, maple neck, rosewood fretboard and bridge.
But, it took some doing ...
1) The neck angle looked great at first, perfectly flat to the upper bout so the the fretboard glued on perfectly straight, with no hump or dip anywhere. Only problem was, the surface of the frets when straightedged out to the bridge, hit the bridge so low that no decent action could be created. What to do? Well, I mounted, glued and added a bolt to the neck, so the neck was on, to stay.
2) I sanded almost 3/32” off the top of the bridge.
3) I needed to deepen the saddle slot, but without spending $130 for a saddle slot router guide, I couldn’t figure out a way to accomplish it. So, I lowered the overall height of the saddle itself, and cut some ramps into the bridge pin holes to give the strings a decent break angle. I compensated the saddle in the standard way.
4) Had to do some fancy shaving of the neck since it was bout 1/64” wider than the fretboard on both sides, oddly enough, but that worked out fine, and it plays well.
Strung it up and played it. Hmmm! Nice tone; not very good intonation. I decided to do something new to fix the intonation.
Removed the nut and cut .075” off the nut end of the fretboard. Replaced the nut, set the string-height, and was very gratified. As Mike Doolin talks about in his excellent (Best on the Web) article on intonation, by shortening of the fretboard at the top end, along with the compensation at the bridge, the intonation fell right into place, and now the guitar is as well-intonated as my Taylor 510. It’s actually a pleasure to play and it doesn’t sound bad. See the bottom of the page for a sound clip..
I emailed Mike Doolin about the fretboard fix; he emailed
back a long correspondence with some great info, along
with the fact that he no longer shaves the end of his
fretboards as he once did: He merely lowers the strings
to the height of the first fret, plus .005”. I chickened out.
I followed his procedure, but instead of .005”, I added .015”.
(I doubt my own fret-leveling, measuring and slot-filing skills.)
But, when I finished up and played the guitar ... darned if it
didn’t have a great action and excellent intonation!
(In Kinkead’s book, he recommends .004” slot depth higher
than the first fret, so Mike Doolin’s .005” isn’t extreme. FYI:
Grizzly’s manual recommends 1/64”, or .015625”.)
Okay, the “kit” is not much good for learning about guitars:
The woods used aren’t the “normal” woods, and you
don’t learn anything much about building a guitar -- but
the result was not bad. Not bad at all. This would make
any new player a good guitar they could enjoy using for
a year or so, and would be a good-sounding “beater” that
anyone could take to the campfire and enjoy. It has turned i
nto a good learning experience, after all.
And now, you know ”The Rest of the Story!”
Bill
10/30/2006
Not a Kit in the Same Sense as Others ...
Filed the nut slot down to the 1st fret height (.049”) plus .015”: It plays easily; as easily as my Taylor 510. (And if you’ve ever played a taylor, you know that’s saying a lot!) No buzz, no rattle: easy to play.
