Choosing the kit

So I've decided that rather than building from scratch, I'm going to start with a kit, maybe upgrade some parts and concentrate on the finish. But which kit?


There seem to be limited options out there for bass kits and more of a selection for guitar. Whilst for guitar you get a choice of Les Paul, Strat, Tele, Flying V etc. for bass its simply precision or jazz based off the Fender classics.


Check out on e-bay and you'll find quite a lot of these, including some "no name" kits that whilst seem well specified, I would be uncertain about the quality of.


So the weapon of choice amongst guitar builders for this kind of thing seems to be Saga kits. Luckily for me, they seem to have recently bought out a Jazz bass kit the JB-10.

Apparently quality of these kits can be variable and I have read of the nuts not being well files or placed and inconsistencies in the body wood needing repair. However electronics, neck and fretwork seem generally OK and that's the difficult bit. I expect I may have to do some minor fixes once I get the kit, but that's not really a problem.


As you can see from the above picture, the minimum work you need to do is carve the headstock, finish  the wood parts (Danish oil is usually most simple) and put it altogether. However, I'm going to do a bit more than that I think and improve on the bass as a whole...