 A good project to learn on - plays OK with upgrades. |
| Review Date: May 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: S. Delaney, usa |
I got this kit off Ebay. Everything is included and all the holes are predrilled so the kit can really be fully assembled in under 2 hours. The instructions are pretty poor so you should really have some basic understanding of the parts of an electric guitar and how they fit together. The entire pickguard and pickups were pre-wired in my kit and no soldering is needed. Now the real secret of this kit is that if you want a guitar that you can actually play and enjoy it - you will have to upgrade a few things.
The tuners are not very good in this kit and the mounting screws were hard to install(very small screws that wanted to strip the heads very easily). I upgraded to a set of Sperzel locking tuners I got used off Ebay and it was like night and day compared to the originals. I had to open the predrilled tuner holes up some to fit the new tuners. Also, be absolutely sure the body/neck joint is tight. I had about a small gap (probably around .010 to .012 inch) when I put mine together and it wouldn't stay in tune. I even stripped the head of one of the neck joint screws trying to tighten it to get rid of the gap. I got a chisel and sandpaper and leveled the body joint a bit and now I have a tight fit (after finging a replacement screw) and the guitar plays well. You will learn a lot about guitar setup from putting this kit together. Everything will have to be adjusted - truss rod, saddle height, intonation and I have even had to do a little fret filing to eliminate high E string buzz. I also got some cheap roller string trees and they seem to help. The nut had to have a lot of filing done on it. It is a cheap plastic nut and was really grabbing and binding the strings. The depth of the slots was ok but the channels were way too narrow. I also blocked off the bridge because I want to keep the tuning stable and I'm not really expecting it to be stable with the trem floating - even expensinve guitars with trems are hard to keep in tune. The wood on this guitar isn't really suitable for a clear finish. I spent as much on paint and laquer as I did the kit itself and chose a nice metallic copper finish.
The pickups are OK but the bridge is a little to high pitched for my liking and I am upgrading it to a little nicer pickup. Oddly enough, the bridge pickup was not hooked to a tone knob so I had to figure out how to wire that in. Overall, I really learned a lot through putting this kit together. I am planning on building an electric guitar from scratch and this kit was a good learning experience for me. You can assemble the basic kit with small and large head phillips screwdrivers and the included allen wrenches. You may need a couple of other tools - especially a jigsaw or coping saw to cut out the headstock shape of your choice and a small, thin file for the nut slots. With some patience and a few upgrades and modifications you can have a pretty good guitar. If you are just wanting an cheap guitar to play - you're better off buying a squire strat online for the same price. |
Saga ST10
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| Review Date: March 28, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Rand Rueter, Corallitos, California |
I have built two of the Saga ST10 kits and they are extemely simple to build. The only materials not furnished in the kit are paint, sandpaper, sanding blocks and a scroll saw.
The guitars have nice balance and are very similar to my Fender strats in weight. The neck pocket is very tight and it helps to sand the sides of the the neck base to get a good fit.
I would prefer solder connections to the push pin socket type, but there has been no problem with the connections so far. I painted mine with 1969 Corvette touchup paint and it looks like a strat from that era. The neck is actually nicer than some of my factory guitars. |
Striking a Middle Ground
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| Review Date: September 24, 2009 |
| Reviewer: popmusicfan, northeastern Ohio |
| I purchased one of these kits from an on-line seller several months ago and put it together. My review will strike a middle ground between the others that have already been written on Amazon.com. Compared with the Saga Telecaster copy kit (which I've also reviewed), this one actually is a bit easier to assemble. Most notably, feeding the wires through the pre-cut holes is considerably easier. The kit I received was wired correctly; however, I've read more than one review on the Internet from purchasers who have received badly wired kits, so maybe I was lucky. The body on my guitar was pretty nice looking, so I went with no paint, no stain, just lacquer clear coat. Clearly, the body consists of several pieces of wood put together, but it finished very nicely. Given my previous experience trying to stain a Saga P-bass kit and painting a Saga Tele kit, the natural look is the way to go. OK, so it might look a little like a cutting board -- just keep it out of the kitchen... The strings I received were far worse than those with the other two Saga kits (Tele copy and P-bass) I've built. The problem was that two of them were terribly kinked. Because I've assembled the kit as a gift and will be replacing the strings with some nice GHS Boomers before Christmas 2009 anyway, it's not a problem that the G and D strings don't fret properly at about the 9th and 10th frets: the new strings will fix it. The fingerboard is fine (actually looks quite nice after a little fretboard oil treatment), the frets are fine, and the electronic are fine. The "whammy bar" works OK, but I'm not a big fan of them. My suggestion to the recipient of the Christmas present will probably be to avoid it and practice on the fundamentals. Truthfully, I like the Tele kit better, despite the overly small pre-cut wiring holes. Perhaps more importantly than anything else, the "T" kit sounds more like its Fender inspiration than the "S" kit sounds like its Fender inspiration. Still, it was a fairly easy, fun project and looks very cool. |
Terrible purchase--don't buy it!
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| Review Date: June 7, 2009 |
| Reviewer: K. Stewart, Pennsylvania |
| I bought the Tele version from Saga. The G- and B-string tuner holes in the headstock were drilled too close together, making it impossible to fit the G tuner to the headstock and making it impossible to tune the G string accurately. Also, one wire was too short, so I had to supply my own. The distributor wouldn't correct the problem, told me to contact Saga. Saga never responded. The guitar is useless (wasting not only the money for the purchase but the cost of the paint, hours invested, etc). You don't want this product! |
Rip off!
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| Review Date: April 22, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Brian J. Smith, Meridian, ID |
My son purchased this kit for a school project.
Ultimately we found out that it was wired incorrectly- verified by both his industrial systems teacher and myself, an engineer. Emails to the parent company, Saga Music, went COMPLETELY unanswered. Since my son had already painted/finished part of the body before getting to the wiring stage, the instrument was deemed unreturnable.
If you want to flush $160 down the drain, go for it. I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone. I give it the lowest possible rating and I fervently hope the people who produce it go out of business. |
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