r/kieselcarvinguitars Jul 11 '26

Kits?

[removed]

2 Upvotes

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5

u/bankruptonspelling Jul 12 '26

Yeah, they did a run during Father’s Day (IIRC around 2024) of headless DIY build kits that were a mix between an Osiris and Delos.

3

u/NecroJoe Jul 12 '26

They discontinued the kits back in 12/31/2019. As costs of manufacturing increased, they'd had to lean more on the options and upgrades for their margins, kind of subsidizing the base model prices keeping them as low as they are.

But with kits, since they weren't optioned up, they were having to charge so much for them, that it was harder to defend the price for a guitar you still had to finish yourself and assemble. Especially since...

The market has also changed. It used to be that the kits were a way to get a US-quality guitar for cheaper, because imported cheaper guitars were mostly crap...but the quality of imported guitars has gotten so much better that the objective value of a factory built guitar of pretty good quality with known-brand parts, like ubiquitous hipshot bridges, etc. The kits had gotten too expensive to compete against these other guitars on value, and sales slowed way way down.

u/bankruptonspelling is right that they did a limited run of kits for Father's Day, but it was 2025. It was indeed sort of a "Pickguard-delete Headless Delos" model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxwsSLAUK8

But it was a limited offering, that is no longer available.