Bolt guitars.

FastEddie

I've enjoyed the Studio Rats video's of them making one of these guitars.
There is not a chance of me doing the build. Simply not my thing.

I am interested in getting one ready made.

Has anyone got one?
They are on special right now and the price seems to be very appealing.https://boltguitars.co.uk/product/thunder-road-vintage-t-style/

I'd ask them to put some BKP 52 Tele pups in it but save that......

I sold my Mexican tele and do rather miss it now I am getting back into playing again.

A good value for money guitar or not?

TTony

We “made” one here a while back.

Its not really “making” though, most time went into the finishing followed by a bit of assembly.

Good quality components, the neck was a stunning piece of flamed maple, fretwork nicely finished.

If you want one made for you, then I’d say it’d be a few days (elapsed) of someone’s time that you’d need to pay for, which will add to the price quite considerably.

guitarjack66

I tried to buy one,but it was too fast for me.

BillDL

guitarjack66 said:

I tried to buy one,but it was too fast for me.

That's nuts.

FastEddie

TTony said:

We “made” one here a while back.

Its not really “making” though, most time went into the finishing followed by a bit of assembly.

Good quality components, the neck was a stunning piece of flamed maple, fretwork nicely finished.

If you want one made for you, then I’d say it’d be a few days (elapsed) of someone’s time that you’d need to pay for, which will add to the price quite considerably.

Shocking. 

Lewy

TTony said:

If you want one made for you, then I’d say it’d be a few days (elapsed) of someone’s time that you’d need to pay for, which will add to the price quite considerably.

There's a "build it for me" option on the site that adds £120 which doesn't seem too bad to me.

TTony

Lewy said:

TTony said:

If you want one made for you, then I’d say it’d be a few days (elapsed) of someone’s time that you’d need to pay for, which will add to the price quite considerably.

There's a "build it for me" option on the site that adds £120 which doesn't seem too bad to me.

That sounds very reasonable!

Plus, they're the experts with their finishing kit, so you should get a very good result.

FastEddie

TTony said:

Lewy said:

TTony said:

If you want one made for you, then I’d say it’d be a few days (elapsed) of someone’s time that you’d need to pay for, which will add to the price quite considerably.

There's a "build it for me" option on the site that adds £120 which doesn't seem too bad to me.

That sounds very reasonable!

Plus, they're the experts with their finishing kit, so you should get a very good result.

That would be choice. Built, it comes in a £510 ish. 
Not sure if that is great value considering I would get the pups changed. 

BillDL

I don't understand why you have already decided that you want to install your own choice of pickups before hearing the custom wound ones supplied with the kit?

From what I have seen of the kits they use high quality components and I'm sure the pickups will be of equally good quality.

Assuming you already have your own pickups and like them (no guarantee they will sound the same in different guitars though), perhaps you could ask Sam at Bolt Guitars whether he would be prepared to take a bit off the overall price and fit your pickups instead of his.  I suppose the amount would depend on how much they pay for their pickups.  I have a feeling they are a small enough enterprise whereby they keep a stock of each individual component and assemble the boxed kits to order rather than buying in the ready boxed kits and adding the finishing products to them when specified by a customer, which could lead to them having a spare unused set of pickups lying around gathering dust if they were not used for a kit.

I can see sense in wanting to have the guitar built for you.  The actual assembly of a very well made kit is the lesser part of the job by far.  Less well made kits can be a pain getting everything to line up with pre-drilled holes, etc.  In the case of Bolt Guitars the assembly should be problem free and to very close tolerances though.  Finishing has always been the issue that puts most people off building their own kits, and a good kit can easily be spoiled by a poor quality finish, so I can see a lot of sense in paying what I think is a very reasonable price for the kit to be built and finished for you.  For £510 (or a little bit less if you were able to get a discount for supplying your own pickups) I think you will get a guitar that, if bought new as a known brand production model, would probably retail for around the £1,000 mark or perhaps more, but it would be different from run-of-the-mill production models and sit halfway between them and fully custom built guitar that would cost many times more.

That's the hardest part to decide, or certainly would be for me.  For roughly the same price I could buy a new FGN Boundary Iliad which is roughly a Tele shape but not a bog standard Tele copy.  They are pretty good quality guitars for the price but are the "affordable" models despite having compound radius fretboards.  You would pay around £900 to £1,000 for the FGN J Standard Iliad models with Seymour Duncan pickups, and I think they would be more on a par with the Bolt kit asembled and finished for you.  There are plenty other makes and models for comparison purposes.

I assume you have already read the threads about Bolt Guitars here?:

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/246791/any-guitar-kit-builders-out-there/p1

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/249114/dividing-opinion/p1

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/248118/building-a-bolt-guitar-now-built/p1

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/249006/my-first-build-a-bolt-guitars-thunder-road-t-style/p1

FastEddie

Re-the last post; Thanks.
I will ask about a 'ready made' option with some pups sent to them. 
I had a set of BKP pups in my old MexTele. Country Boy I think. Sounded like honey. 

The idea of a flamed neck sounds very cool indeed

bertie

FastEddie said:

 Sounded like honey. 
 

kept buzzing ?

drofluf

Lewy said:

TTony said:

If you want one made for you, then I’d say it’d be a few days (elapsed) of someone’s time that you’d need to pay for, which will add to the price quite considerably.

There's a "build it for me" option on the site that adds £120 which doesn't seem too bad to me.

Having built one kit (to a not very high standard ) and refinished another, this time to a level that I’m happy with, I’d say £120 offers excellent value.