New Stew-Mac "Limited Edition" Koa Soprano Kits

Who makes and supplies them then???.:confused:.. *NOTE* The angle of the bookmatched grain in the add above.. is not the same as the kit pic's below.
 
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Who makes and supplies them then???.:confused:.. *NOTE* The angle of the bookmatched grain in the add above.. is not the same as the kit pic's below.

I reckon it is Hosco in Japan. I bought a Stewmac Sop kit and have also had one via ToneTech in the UK which was branded Hosco and guess what? They were identical.
 
I broke down and bought one. I've built several guitars but this is to be my first uke. For the most part it seems a pretty good kit although there were some problems. Fortunately, Stewmac's customer service is top notch and an e-mail rectified all the ones I found so far.

specifically,
1) the kerfed linings included were useless as they could not even come close to handling the tight curvatures of the soprano outline. Stewmac is sending a set of their mandolin kerfied linings as a replacement (and said they'd use them to restock all the kits they had).
2) The soundhole purfling slot was almost 2x too wide for the included strips. Fortunately I had enough extra purfling hanging around to fill it up (notified SM anyways)
3) 15 frets precut and nipped (bound fretboard) were included for a fingerboard with 16 slots.

There were some other variations in the design and construction that didn't quite match the stew-mac instructions for their mahogany kit. Nothing too problematic but might cause some confusion for someone without any luthier type experience.

EDIT - well there was an additional piece of koa for the soundhole purfling that would have filled up the slot but it was useless since it had no flexibility. Only a bending iron would be able to get it into the slot without breaking.
 
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