Saga ST-10 Kit

n/a

n/a

i am also presenting this post review, after having the guitar built and set up for a few weeks, i noticed that the action seems to change with the weather. this could be due to the similar review stating that the neck is not properly sealed. i am guessing that this is causing the next to change as the temperature/ humidity changes. it still is ok on mine though, because it doesn't get drastic enough to alter playabilty. although, it's not right for this to happen as far as i know.

dropped it on accident one time, nothing came apart...so i guess it's pretty durable

local guitar shop here in indiana offers some customer support such as replacement parts...but only if you buy the kit from them.

even though this is still a cheap ass kit...i'm still happy with mine. i have about $135.00 in it all together including new tuners, paint and supplies, and the initial cost of the kit. they sell them here in our local music store, for $159.00, so i feel that i got a pretty good deal...except for the neck issue. if it gets worse as time goes by, i'll just replace the neck with a fender. although i have not had it professionally set-up, the action is still very low with no fret buzz. i guess i got one of the better kits that they produce or something. this is the first guitar that i have ever attempted to set up, and quite frankly...it's a pain in the ass if you don't know what you're doing. i just went at it as best as possible, and it came out pretty good. it may not be done correctly, but it works for me.

This is an amendment to my previous review.

After bringing the assembled and strung (though not properly set up) guitar to Flynn Guitars in Evanston, IL, they helped me determine that my tuning problems weren't because of the crappy tuners (even though they were VERY crappy), but because the neck wasn't finished/sealed properly, which would make it induce warpage over time, and because the truss rod was too tight and far down in the cavity to even be adjusted properly. They told me I needed to unstring it, take the neck off and clear coat it with many coats, and bring the whole pile of junk back to them to do a nut cut, redrill for the string tree (my fault), and proper set up. All this would run me at least $250, excluding the cost of the clear coat and other materials I'd need to buy. This is a very fair guitar store that broke the news to me honestly that this $75 kit was basically worthless. I half expected as much, so it didn't bother me - you get what you pay for. I wanted to learn how a Strat was put together, and that's what I got....

I immediately went home and unstrung it and took apart the neck (with tuners/string trees still attached) and threw it away. I'm now in the process of receiving shipment of Grover tuners and a Fender replacement Clapton/V-style maple neck - all for about $120. Counting the $75 I spent on the original ax (only to keep the body and electronics), I will have a custom "Clapton" Strat for less than $200. I'll post another review of the guitar with the new neck and tuners installed in a few weeks...I just wanted to present my story and one alternative of keeping at least part of what you pay for when you get a shitty Saga kit.

where was it made ? probably in japan, not sure. what year? your guess is as good as mine. made of solid bass-wood, and pretty damm solid. 1 volume, 2 tone controls, 3 single coil pickups, 5 way switch. (a strat-in-a-box basically). neck is made of maple, with rose wood finger board. not sure if it's actually rose wood though. the headstock is a big paddle, and you gotta cut your own design into it. i used a jig-saw, with a blade that had 10 teeth per inch. all i did was to cut the headstock at an angle to mirror the top angle. i didn't feel brave enough to try and cut the strat design into it. file and sand the cut, and your done. BEFORE you cut the headstock, install the last tuner. mark the screw hole, or outer edge of the tuner with a pencil. be sure you leave enough meat at the end of the headstock so that the tuner can be screwed in. i almost cut mine too short. body and neck came primed with a clear sealer, and is pretty stable. this is a strat copy, but i do not think the pickguard is exactly the same. the trem. seems to be ok, but i haven't tried it yet. the tuners that they give you totally suck. throw em away and get some decent ones. the neck feels like a strat, and surprisingly, plays pretty fast. i used some axe wax on the fingerboard to slicken the frets up. they give you a cable, but it belongs in the garbage can. they do give you an allen wrench for the strut rod (you will need it despite the instructions), and an allen wrench for the saddles. putting the trem. springs on is a trick in itself. to make it easy, screw the spring claw screws all the way in, and take them back out (without the claw attatched). now, screw the spring claw in, but not all the way. leave it very loose (only screw in the screws about 1/4 of the way) now carefully hook the springs into the trem, and onto the claw. (you will not be able to stretch the spings and get them hooked if you screw the claw all the way in). once the 3 spings are hooked into the trem, and onto the claw, screw in the spring claw screws to pull the springs tight. screw in the screws a little at a time, don't tighten one and them the other. alternate between screws so the pressure stays even.

i mostly play blues, and 50's rock. this guitar sounds pretty damm good despite the cheap pickups. i use alot of reverb, and chorus, which helped fatten up the sound. i play through a crate gfx 30 amp, and the guitar does scream pretty good when it's overdriven, but the sound is not as "fat" as it should be. do yourself a favor, and cut the "snap together connectors off, and solder the wires together. the connectors suck.

set-up ? what set-up. preset truss rod ? that's damm near impossible. nothing is adjusted, you gotta set it up yourself. the neck and body fit together like a glove on mine, and i didn't have to sand anything . the fit was tight, and precise. all holes were drilled, except for the ones in the headstock for the tuners, and string trees.
the nut is plastic, and i didn't have to file it at all. all in all, this area was very good on the kit that i received. double check to make sure all of the holes are drilled, and that they line up before you start to paint or assemble it. the body is made of 3-4 peices of wood glued together. the seams were pretty visible, but there were no knots in the wood. this one could have been clear coated, and buffed.
alot of people have said that they had problems with the screws breaking. i didn't run into that problem. all screws were ok, and went in like they are supposed to. if you decide to paint the body, don't forget to mask off the pocket where the neck screws onto the body.

i don't know how durable it is. i just finished it and haven't thrown it around yet. it seeme like it could withstand quite a beating, but i don't plan on throwing it on the ground. the hardware is cheap, but it should be ok for awhile. the chrome is a bit thin. as for the finish, you gotta finish it yourself. you can leave it as is, clear coat the sealed wood, or paint it. i chose to paint mine. now don't think i'm a goofball or anything, but i painted mine with krylon sun yellow spray paint. (yes, krylon. at $2.26 a can, why not?) i sprayed a couple of good coats of krylon gray primer on it, and sanded before painting the base color. i went out on a limb, and tried something off the wall. after spraying about 5 coats of the yellow paint, i put a coat of opal spray glitter (from the craft department at wal-mart) over the paint. then, i put 8 coats of krylon chrystal clear over that. let it dry fot a week, and wetsanded the finish to remove the roughness, and orange-peel. after wetsanding, i used 3-m fine cut rubbing compound, and rubbed it out by hand. with the spray glitter in between the yellow and the clear , it looks as if the yellow paint has the flakes in it. i would compare it to a sparkle finish found on some dan-electro guitars. you gotta let the light hit it just right to see all of the sparkles though. the sparkles are not overbaring the color, and are kind of hidden. it worked out good. take the time to wet-sand, and buff out the finish by hand, and you'll get a professional looking finish for alot less money. using krylon may not have been the best way to paint this thing, but i don't have a spray gun, or an air compressor. i didn't want to dump a ton of money into a paint job. i couldn't find bright yellow in automotive laquer paint that came in a spray can. the krylon acts just like laquer, heck, it just might be laquer. i have some painting experience, so i knew what to do from the star as far as how to spray the paint, and how to finish it once the clear was dry.

what?

i don't consider myself a musician, but i've "messed around" with guitars for about 15 years. i also own a vintage kay swing-master electric hollowbody. if this saga were stolen or lost, i would buy another one. i didn't run into any problems while putting it together. it was simple, everything went together like it should have, all parts were included, and it was fun to build. i love the finish...only because it came out better than expected. for the $$, you can't beat it. i looked at a few guitars that this compaired to , but they were alot more money.
besides, i wanted the experience of assembling a guitar. it's not like you really build anything, because 80% of it is done for you before you even get it. you get to be creative by cutting the headstock, and finishing the body. total assembly time was about 30 minutes. set-up time was about 45 minutes to an hour. you will have to adjust the strut rod, no matter what the instructions say. the frets will buzz, and you will have to be patient during the set-up.
all in all, it was well worth the money, and fun to build. i think i'll get another one just for the hell of it, and paint it krylon orange, with the glitter and clear. all in all, i would say that the guitar i got is one of the better kits from saga. reading some of the other reviews proves that some are good, and some are bad. buying one of these kits is a gamble. you could get lucky like i did and get a good one, or you could get a total pile of junk. roll the dice and see what you get.

Made in 2002. Ordered in late 2002 and arrived in January 2003. Made in Korea, though Saga is out of San Francisco. 24 frets - typical Strat neck. Solid finished basswood body; I chose to leave mine unpainted because I like the natural look - and because I wanted to PLAY it! Two tone/one volume, floating tremolo bridge, S/S/S pickups...do I really need to go on? Just know that it's Saga's Strat kit. Slightly above average for features.

Sound...I've had one night to test this baby out. The pickups in mine are average to very good. Not excellent, but certainly not shit. The 2 and 4 hum-cancelling positions work really well. Sounds like a Strat. Not much you can ask for in the $75 department. I'm taking this guitar to get a proper setup, and the tuners could be slightly better, which would improve the overall sound. I'm taking off two points for these deficiencies.

Action: so-so. I don't trust myself with a truss rod mainly, much less Strat bridge saddles (I'm used to Les Pauls and got this as a cheap second guitar in case my Paul breaks a string).

Fit and finish: amazing for what I paid. Very good and in-the-pocket. I was really pleasantly surprised at how tight this guitar feels after some of the bad reviews on here made it sound like '50s novelty Elvis toy guitar.

I noticed a problem with the tuners that had to do less with open strings and power chords being played, than with open chords, strangely enough. So there seems to be a slight problem with the neck at the 2-4 fret area, which I'm hoping a decent setup will fix. The tuners themselves seem to be fine - no worse than a Mexi Strat I owned and Squiers I've tried. Durability I really can't comment on as I've owned in little more than a day, but, again, it has the quality of somewhere between a low-end MIM Strat and a mid to high-level Squier.

Virtually none. Heed the other reviews here and just visit your local dealer and/or luthier.

I will defend the Saga - an amazing deal for the money. If you want to know how a Strat works, want to build a "Franken-Strat," need a low-cost second ax, or just want a cool woodworking experience, I would recommend this guitar. If you want an electric that plays great from the get-go and don't have at least a fair amount of patience, don't bother.

everything comes in pieces so you can part out what you dont want and buy stuff to fix it up before you even put it all together. saved time and money. $60 Bought a used strat neck off ebay, got $20 gotoh tuners, and graphtec nuts for the nut & bridge.

stock pickups are squire quality. played live with it, i gotta good amp and it got by. enough said about that. I just bought SRV fender pickups to put in it, and it sounds like a $1200 strat. seriously.

dont be afraid to part out the crap parts in this kit and get what you really want. thats whats so cool about this kit!

I took a blow torch to the unfinished body to give the soft wood a relic touch on the outside. A bunch of (what seemed like) body putty started popping up at me. I think the body was set up for paint and not wood stain. So i torched the outside, stained the middle rustic orange, and stained the outside ebony. didnt put any varnish on it whatsoever. i want it to wear. The stain really didnt soak in well so it looks like its been beat up and sitting in a window for 50 years... I like it, but not what i expected.
the action is good, i put it together and had my luthier set it all up for like $30, well worth the $$. All things considered it have around $300 into it!

I never broke a string with it because I bought of the $12 graphite nut and $40 graphtec saddle. most dependable guitar for not breaking strings! GET RID OF THE STOCK ONES. THEY SUCK. get this kit and fix it up...

With my SRV pickups and fender replacement neck, its the fender strat i never had. You really need to take advantage if this deal if you want to build your own strat that sounds like a thousand dollar guitar, but you want to beat the HELL out of it.

look, its everything i expected. it came with a mahogany neck, i put a maple one on it. I took the crap pickups out and put in SRV ones. I put my own finish on it. It looks & sounds like an relic strat. I can beat it up without worrying about its value going down.

My suggestion is if you wanna build your own strat buy this kit and throw another $160 into it. it will go a long way!

Standard Strat features with really cheapo tuners (throw them away and get yourself some replacements). Pick-ups are surprisingly quiet and produce fairly good sound. Body wood is soft so watch out, dents easily! Neck is paddle shaped so you can cut your own headstock - this was one of the most fun thing to do in this kit but cutting it using a coping saw needs lots of patient and strength. You do your own spraying - remember to get proper auto spray paint.

Overall, for something as cheap as this, you shouldn't expect too much but it was definitely fun putting the whole thing together. You want a proper guitar, try the more expensive options or buy the parts individually and fix one up. This is a starter's kit and for what you pay, IMO, it's a great deal!

I hooked it up to a transistor amp and the sound was pretty good - a bit thin but sweet and bright. Not much difference between this kit guitar and most of the Strat copies I've tried. The wiring may be a bit of a suspect as switching pickups produces electrical "clicks". The stock pickups I have are working fine so won't be changing them just yet. Please change the tuning keys - they are totally crap!

Run it thru the overdrive and this guitar can really scream. My neighbours weren't impressed and I felt like throwing the tuners at them.

I have to give this part a really low score as mine came without holes from the jack to the main pickup cavity and from the spring claw cavity. Drilling the holes myself was not much of a problem but it should have been done properly at the factory!

My neck fits well to the neck cavity but the action was way too low and every string either buzz like mad or simply sits on the fret! Setting up and tuning was a real bugger but after lots of hard work, managed to get it to "scream". The bloody cheapo tuners look real ugly and you should throw them away (I've said that already?). Rest of the hardware seems fine. Hey, you only pay $79, so don't ask for the sky!

Live playing? Better use it as a backup's backup.

The finish I put on the guitar was with some cheapo spray lacquer and it sure as hell won't last too long -already got dents, scraps and cuts all over. I blame it on the paint, not my handywork.

The strap buttons came without felts, I made my own. In terms of hardware, they should last for a while but the tuners...... I don't gig, I just like to annoy my neighbours.

The Saga website is a dead link. I don't think they'll deal with you even if you can get thru to them.

I've been playing since my early school days and I own an Aria TA-40 semi-hollow body - it's a really beatiful and well made guitar. I'm building a Santana PRS copy at the moment and the Saga Kit was just for fun. I wouldn't buy this kit again if it were stolen as buying all the parts individually and building a guitar from scratch is a lot more fun (but more expensive).

I like this Saga kit 'cos it was cheap and easy and fun. I didn't have any high expectations and hence, it was a really nice surprise that such a cheapo guitar can sound this good. At the price of a decent pickup, you should not complain too much about this kit.

Buying a guitar is not the same as making one your own. Whatever the price, quality or looks, if you like making your own guitars, you should be proud of each and every one you make.

2002 build it yourself Kit. Strat copy. Don't know where it was made ... so wherever they got this thing it was made on a Friday by a guy stoned out of his mind with no quality concerns and looking to get to the bar early.

Standard strat hardware ...

Horrendous out of the box. What can I say ...

Very noisy, even for a strat. So I opened it up and shielded the body cavity, and did the guitarnuts.com ritual for reducing hum.

Whoever soldered this thing ... was not the most skillful artisan ...

Action was below standards (and I have low standards). The nut was cut wrong for starters. Had to break out the trusty dental floss to stop the buzz at the first fret on the high E. Next, there was a noticeable buzz all up and down the neck. This was unfixable since the truss rod was not anchored ... oops. The buzz was from the truss rod boinging around inside the routed cavity on the neck. Very difficult to fix a bow in the neck when the truss rod aint attached.

The finishing job - well, what can I say. The wood looked pretty good. However, they had the thing so covered with some sealing crap that anything other than laquer paint was unusable. Nothing was getting into that grain. Stain will not penetrate that crap so if you want to do a sunburst finish or a translucent stain ... don't waste your time and money since it just dribbles harmlessly off the coating.

On a positive note, the routing and the drilling were dead on correct.

This kit was a piece of crap from the beginning. The neck was crap and unusable. The bridge pickup was dead and could not be repaired. I put a multimeter to it and the winding somewhere inside has a break. Since I do not feel like unwinding 20 miles of 43 guage wire ... I just trashed it and got an old single coil I had in the house. The pots and switches were noisy and had to be replaced.

When all was said and done ... the guitar I ended up building had only the pickguard, and 2 pots. I definitely feel stupid for buying this kit.

I called them. They said they would send a replacement switch and pickup ... never got it. I

I have been playing for over 20 years. Have owned many guitars over the years. Gibson Black Beauty LP, Takamine Acoustic, Gibson Archtop Acoustics. A recent visit from mister thief deprived me of any guitars ... so currently I own crap. Now the guy who stole my collection ... he has some damn good axes!

I gave this kit a shot. Wasted my money ... sigh. Suggest you buy a cheap Strat knock off or purchase the parts on your own. I ended up purchasing a new body, a new neck, a pot for volume, a selector switch, and recycling a pickup.

You are better off not using a saga kit, but buying a do-it-yourself guide and purchasing the parts yourself. I paid little - I got less.

See the other reviews....no change here

Surprisingly good - first time I got it wired up I was pleasantly surprised by the spanky Strat tones from this thing. I have a set of Van Zandts I was planning to install, but I may hold off for a while.

Overall action was disappointing - the first neck I recieved had a pronounced backbow, and a very loose neck-body fit, to the extent that it was unplayable. Got a replacement (eventually) from the EBay vendor, and while the body/neck joint is much better, the neck heel is too deep - strings are touching the fretboard where the neck meets the body. However, looks fixable, I'll find out in the next couple of days.

Body and neck were both sealed and sanded to quite a high standard.

The hardware is better than I expected, but not great - it's only intended to be a backup guitar and tinkering platform in any case.

No experience with Saga, but my dealer did replace a faulty neck

BIG RULE - DON'T buy this kit if you want instant gratification - you can't just bolt it together and expect it to be as playable as a store-bought instrument. You WILL have to spend time tweaking, adjusting and even woodworking to get it into a playable condition.

Still, for $89 it's not bad at all - I've played worse guitars that cost far more

Purchased in Jan. 2002 so it's probably 2001 or 2000, Korean, I think. 21 frets, standard strat 5-way switch, volume and two tone controls. 3 single coil P/U's. Body is sealed basswood, neck is maple with rosewood fretboard. String through tremolo bridge.

Finally got it fully assembled and have gotten some good sounds out of it. Rock and blues for me. There's greater variety in the pickup sounds than my 1987 Japanese Squier Strat. I play through a Roland Blues Cube with a standard Wah pedal, chorus and distortion. Good sound for the money.

Since it's a kit there's very little done at the factory. Once I had it put together I knew that I needed to file the nut a bit and tweak the truss rod a touch. But I didn't have any neck/pocket fit problems. In fact, my neck is incredibly well finished. I'm used to cheap imports having poorly constructed necks with lots of burrs and this thing was smooth as butter. After reading the reviews I didn't want to risk the neck screws so I got a StewMac neckplate and screws. I added washers to the strap buttons and I upgraded to Fender Standard Tuning Machines and I know it was worth it. Assembly of the kit itself was easy, and I decided not to rewire it yet because it doesn't really need it. I shielded the cavities and the noise reduction is noticable. The body was nicely sealed, but I should've sanded it better as I ended up with some sandthroughs of my final finish due to an uneven original surface. I used ReRanch Nitrocellulose laquer aerosols to finish it in surf green with a deep shiny clearcoat. Cost: $50. Until Kramer brought out their recent surf green Pacers this was the cheapest way to get a surf green guitar. I cut the headstock in a traditional Fender profile and added my own decal. FUNDADA Surfcaster. I did a lot of work to make this look nice and it has paid off.

It still needs some work to get to live playing condition (and so do I...) The original hardware was cheap and would've been a problem eventually. The upgrades cost me all of $40 (I love you eBay). My finsih is Nitro so it's going to be hard as a rock but eventually mellow in color and shrink too far, but that's what I wanted. Eventually it will gig but I will have a backup.

The guys who sell it are very nice, Online Guitars. But I don't think there's any other customer support for the kits.

I've been playing poorly for 20 years. I own a 1987 Japanese Squier Strat, a 2000 Squier Standard Tele and a customized Johnson Tele.

I will eventually buy more of these kits as I thoroughly enjoyed the finishing process and know that I can make some incredible works of art using these guitars as my canvas. It plays well enough for a kit and the upgrades toward substantial playability and durability are easy and affordable.

The stock p'ups aren't bad. They certainly don't sound like $100 ones, but they're okay. There is a hum at higher settings, but it's not bad either.

I had to shim the neck and where it meets the body is not a perfect fit. The slot on the body is too wide. Thus, the strings don't sit directly over the p'up magnets. I also had to file the nut down considerably. There were only 3 tremolo springs included w/mine, when there should have been 5. Still, the frets are nicely leveled and the body, while not premium, looks and responds to sound well for what it is.

The tuners aren't too bad, either.

I don't gig, but with some modifications, I would probably play this live w'out a backup.

N/A

This was a fun and eye-opening experience. From painting, to designing the headstock, to setting the intonation, I learned a lot about what makes an electric guitar work and the differences between premium gits and kit gits.

I love what putting this guitar together has taught me. It's also neat to have been able to put my own touches on it. Most impressive was the quality of the sound. I have been playing for nearly 15 years and this guitar, despite its flaws, sounds very nice. It has a pleasant ring and feel.

I, like others, would have liked better quality with the fit and hardware, but I wasn't really expecting too much, so I was surprised overall. This was and will continue to be, an enjoyable learning process. I really look forward to replacing the tuners and pickups and fixing the neck/body joint. For under $300 (with modifications)this will definitely make a fine addition to anyone's gear.

Buy one, be patient, and have fun with it! Great value for the price.