Saga ST-10 Kit

I was inspired to buy this thing because my friend owns an aircraft paint company and I wanted to finish a guitar with his products to bring to an airshow in June. There's alot of widely different opinions on this product on Harmony-Central, but let's be honest instead of rude. It's not crap. It's just not custom shop for sure and a few changes make a decent instrument. The body is basswood (something used in aircraft construction, by the way), the neck is maple/rosewood. The pickups ar Mexican clones, and the hardware except for the crummy tuners is about "Allparts" quality. The "sealer" which comes applied and leveled is of generous thickness and yields a decent base for paint. Mine came with an uncut headstock and I traced my friend's '74 for a big '70's strat look.

I replaced the cheap-os with two 70's vintage Fender P-U's and a Duncan blade at the neck position. Sound is very decent with these P-U's, I'm sure the Mexacali Chinese thingers would have been disappointing. I get all my fav Fender tones... two "quacks" and standard Strat neck and bridge. Not bad at all really. The "10" rating is definitely with my mods.

Well... I didn't break any screws! Put away the power drills with screw driver bits! I found a crack outside the nut on top of the rosewood when I replaced the plastic with bone. The electronic parts are identical to Mexican. The neck joint is good but not perfect, but nickely leveled in relation to the body. The neck and frets were surprisingly well leveled.

I don't intend to bounce it off the floor, but if I'm ever stoned at a performance and decide to smash and burn an axe, this is the one I'll hurt! I would use it on a gig because I put enough work into it to take it out of the "toy" category.

I have an expanding guitar collection including Godin, Fender, Gibson, Martin and more. This guitar is what it is and was actually fun to put together and paint. Don't think you're going to get a super zoot guitar but you can get a decent one with a little extra effort. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention I added mini Grovers for another 30 bucks. I give this category a '9' cause you couldn't build one from the ground up for the same investment with any quality at all. $89 wouldn't buy a Schaller bridge.

korean, just like the older squires...i work in a guitar shop and the pickups, tuners, and bridge look the same(exactly) as old squires. i think these sagas are made in the same factory by the same ppl that squires were(theyre now being made in indonesia). that being said they are not the same build quality as squire. they arent as nice!!

solid basswood, comes finished with sealer(smooth but not pretty) 25.5"scale, maple neck, rosewood fretboard,(ill talk about the neck later:) )

has the same features as a strat(but if the features arent the same quality do they get the same rating?)

sounds like a strat (with cheap-ass pickups and a !yack! basswood body) this is not my first guitar, my best guitar, the first guitar i put together, or the last guitar ill buy. ive got several amps and lots of effects, it doesnt sound great with any, it does sound good (for the price)FOR THE PRICE.

OK, this is the shitty part. several screws broke off while i was putting them into the guitar. tuning machine screws and pickguard screws(thank god none of the neck screws broke)

SAGA i know youre not a top of the line manufacturer, but you can afford screws that dont fucking break! you should be ashamed, if the screws were decent the guitar would feel a bit better than it is, but the screws fucking suck! several stripped out while i was putting it together by hand. and some of the holes didnt even match up with parts(pickguard again).

the neck. it has a very strange contour. if you look at the back of the neck you can see the fretboard wood on each side. with a standard strat-style neck the sides of the fretboard should be almost square with the top surface. it feels like the neck was put together, then cut. not cut, then put together. so anyway it feels wierd.

the neck joint is bad too, not wobbly or anything that bad, just a big ole gap in there. i really dont care, im not interested in sound as much as you might be, this is a plaything for me.

i guess you get what you pay for.

ive been playing like 10-12-14 yrs. im not sure ive slept since then. i would never use this guitar for anything onstage(as it comes) with some new hardware, neck, bridge, electronics, and possibly body i would consider it. in other words nothing on this guitar is stageworthy. its just a toy.

use it around the house or loan it to a new player to learn on.

ive got many other guitars fenders, gibsons, and guilds.

if you decide to buy this guitar before you sit down to put it together take ALL your nuts and bolts to the hardware store and have them replace them. you will thank yourself(and me!)

the one cool thing is you can paint it yourself. i wish fender and gibson would offer their guitars unfinished so you can get out the paints and drugs and have a good time. for seventy bucks you can afford to paint it and not be out too awful much money.

2002 model. Solid basswood. Standard Strat setup. Pickups are comparable to the American Standard Strat. Solid maple neck. Nice bridge, also comparable to the American Standard Strat. TUNERS SUCK!! I didn't even bother to install them. Very nice neck with medium to jumbo frets. I rate this section a 7 just because of the crappy tuners. If it came with die-cast sealed tuners, it would rate a 10.

I play 60's/70's rock and blues, some jazz. The pickups put out very nice tone. I play through a 1966 Kalamazoo amp, all tube. Pickups are as noisy as the American Standard Strat, less noise than the Mexican. Middle pickup is reverse wound for hum cancelling in 2 and 4 positions. I rewired as outlined at www.guitarnuts.com. Highly recommended.

Guitar was easily setup. No problems. Perfect intonation. The nut was too high from the factory, easy to fix. Low action. I leveled and polished the frets when I got it. The 7th and the 13th thru 17th frets were a bit high on one end, but the rest were very nice. Not really that noticable unless you're going to very low action. Basswood is very dense, but also soft. Be carefull screwing in screws, they strip easily. The neck fit perfectly and is very comfortable. No problems with the neck bolts. The fretboard is very nice. This guitar is very comparable to the Fender American Standard at 1/8th the price. Pots are clean, and the switch is nice. Nice saddle and pick guard. The only thing bad is the tuners. I finished it with auto enamel, turquiose blue, like on the old T-birds.

Like I said, basswood is soft. I don't plan on doing a lot of screwing and unscrewing. But it's a solid guitar. I would gig with it.

I've played guitar for 20 years. I've had Fender Strats from Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, and American. This is almost as good as the American Strat. Worth every penny of the $89. Would definately buy again, in fact I just might buy another! I picked up a decent set of sealed tuners for $25, keeps perfect tune.

This is a Fender Stratocaster-type kit guitar. I think it is Korean-made, with 21 medium frets, 3 single coil pickups, 1 volume and 2 tone controls, 5-way pickup selector, maple neck with rosewood fretboard, sealed and perfectly sanded body ready for finishing, vintage strat-style tremolo system, and 6 in-line tuners. Basically, it has everything you need to produce a relatively decent guitar. I cannot think of any features that it should have, but doesn't.

I play almost anything, but mainly classic rock and classic country. I have been using it with a silverface Fender Bassman 100 tube amp head, a homemade 2x12 speaker cabinet, a Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo pedal, and an Ibanez TS7 tube screamer. It sounds about as good as any Fender Squier instrument I've heard, and the pickups are relatively quiet--I'd say about as quiet as the average single coil. You can get less hum by using the neck or bridge pickup together with the reverse-wound middle. I have never gigged before, so I don't know about live situations, but it suits what I do very well.

The neck and body are beautifully shaped, sanded, and sealed. I cannot think of any way it could be improved in this regard. Also, the action is really nice and low, and the guitar plays like a dream. I would have given this product an all-out 10 for action, fit and finish, were it not for the fact that I could not intially get the neck to seat down properly, and the neck screws were so weak that one of them broke, leaving a piece in the body. It all turned out okay, only after I took it to a shop to get the broken shank extracted, the neck properly set, and new, stronger neck screws installed. Also, the tremolo bridge is an excessively tight fit against the pickguard, and I had trouble getting it to seat in properly, and the tuners, though workable, are not that great. If you want to improve this guitar, I recommend installing better tuners.

It seems quite reliable enough, and I suspect it will stand up to live playing. The strap buttons are good and solid. As to durability, the neck and body should be quite durable. The only possible durability issue I see is that the chrome on the hardware seems really thin, and scratches easily.

I never have had to deal with the company, thankfully.

I have been playing both bass and guitar for about 4 years. This is basically an economy guitar kit, and for what it is, it is a very good value. Yes, the hardware is cheap, and the fit and finish out of the box isn't that great, but once you get it assembled correctly, it plays well, and sounds about as good as any economy guitar. If you want something better than an economy guitar, get something else. If this guitar were stolen, I would certainly buy another one, because for the moment, it is all I can afford, being a poor college student. :-)

Not much in this department, basic strat goodies. It came unfinished and sealed, I chose to leave mine as is. Three single-coils. They all sound great, but I plan on replacing the bridge pickup with a SD Quarter-Pounder. The tuners are good enough to stay in tune when I dive with the tremolo. I removed the plastic peice on the tremolo and shortened the bar. Now I can comfortably use it while strumming. I had to carve the head stick to my liking, see as it came as a big square. The neck is nice, but I had to sand the heel to make it fit in the neck pocket.

My setup is:
Custom Guitars > Morley Overdrive > Modified Crybaby > Morley PWA Wah > Boss DS-1 > Danelectro EQ > Marshall JCM-800 with 1meg tone pots. The pickups are a wee bit noisy, but otherwise very good. Nice rice sound in all positions.

Yeah, for about $100 you can "build" your own strat.
I took mine out of the box and in 20 minutes I was playing it.
There's no building to it! Just like the old snap together car models!
These guitars make good guinea pigs, test beds for new pickups or new colors or just for practice or beginners. They are not toys, but they are not professional instruments. I can't see upgrading the pickups, bridge, tuners or anything else when you could put the upgrade cash with the $100 you started with and buy a nice, "real" guitar. Even a Johnson or Turser stratocopy will blow the Saga kit away, and they are already assembled and painted. I bought a Saga kit out of curiousity and sold it piece by piece a few days later. Look elsewhere! I'm not saying it isn't better than some of the thousands of cheap, junky plywood guitars out there, but there are better values.

I play everything from Bluegrass, Classical, and Blues to Texas Swing, John Cougar, and Malmsteen! The classic "Strat" arrangement, with it's 5 way switch and 3 single coils is probably the ultimate in flexibility of tone. But, the Saga kit quite frankly sounds weak, thin, and noisy, so it doesn't fit into anything I play.

Surprisingly, my guitar's bridge was nearly dead on intonation! I fiddled with the action a while and got the thing to really "shred". Likewise, the pickups were hight adjusted nearly perfect for a guitar which could cover many different playing/musical styles. The wood on my particular guitar was very unatractive and the routing was quite sloppy, but no worse than some of the 80's super strats that sold for hundreds of dollars. In another time, the Saga kit would've been a welcome sign of value and sanity, but today with all the quality work coming from Korea and even China, it is a bit overpriced for what it is.

I would not trust the snap together connections to play through one single song at a gig. NO WAY!

I've been playing for nearly 15 years, have owned nearly every guitar out there from a Synsonics Terminator to Parker Flys and custom Warmoth Screamers. Enough about the Saga. BUY A DAMN PEAVEY!!!!
Peavey guitars are the most under-rated, under-priced guitars in the world!! Always have been, probably always will be. And I ain't talking about a Wolfgang either! Try an old Impact or the unbelievable Cropper Classic! Bring back the Generation and Odyssey, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

Made in 2000, wood is cheep Basswood and not well cut poor detail. had to do a lot of work to piece it together. Basically it is junk not worth the time or effort needed to make a decent playing and looking guitar, also the body and neck couldn?t stand up to normal playing over time basically just Junk. sorry Saga just telling it like it is {Junk}. I?ve made only a hand full of guitars over the years and thank I have some Ideal of what quality wood and parts are.

Like a cheap kids toy guitar? Junk.

I made it the best it coule be but still it's junk.

Junk?? Junk, Please don't waste your Time or at least your money.

This is a kit guitar. Very heavy body,(basswood or alder), three standard single coils, unfinished body, all aplicable hardware and screws. Neck is maple. Standard vintage style bridge. Med Frets. Quite easy to put together. Came with allen wrenches for bridge and truss rod. It was short and tuner screws, pickguard screws, and had no strap button felts. I chose to buy genuine fender neck plate bolts because of poor reviews here. All these item can be purchased via web or local dealer.

Pickups are ok. I replaced middle and bridge with alnico ones. New bridge pickup was DEAD, so stock went back in. I recommend shielding this as you assemble. See Stewmac.com. I am using this primarily with a zoom 505II and unamplified. Good unaplified sound. Dense body helps.

Nut was cut fine, action was ok although I needed to adjust truss rod some. One bad fret on g string at 13th fret. 14th is buzzing. I sanded it alittle with 600 and then 1000 grit. It's better. The book recommends Spray laquer from a parts store with clear over the top. I use transparent blue. It looks good, but is quite fragile. When summer come around I will repaint with automotive enamel in a vintage color as I have a compressor.

I find this thing very durable. Nice resonance.

What support. Instruction basically say go buy anything you're missing.

I have been paying for 28 years on and off. This guitar compares to a new mexican strat at 1/3 price.

like the other reviews say, cheap tuners (they work, but not well), solid construction, REALLY weak screws for the neck, and pickups that work but arent the greatest thing in the world (sss)

it fits into what i want to play for the most part. ive been getting into playing punk a lot more, but it doesnt sound quite right trying to play ska strokes on it..the thing hums quite a bit, but the reverse wire humbucker trick is very noticable when you use it, it works and gives a cleaner sound then. i blew out the cheap little amp- one of those tiny practice ones, so it now lines through that to my computer's highly superior sound system (altec lansing asc54w). sounds better coming out of that then it did with the little amp. it sounds nice clean, has a real feel to it i think- overdriven you lose a lot of the tone, but thats to be expected somewhat, still sounds good, its a nice sound that id take to a stage and its cheap, what more can you ask for? free cookies?

I only had to adjust the saddles once i got mine assembled and it didnt need much else done to it action-wise, the nut was fine for me, unlike what some other people have said. theres little fret-buzz and im content with it.

finish was the big part of the construction. when i first got it, i went and picked up a few cans of car spraypaint (nitrocellulose) and did a dark blue sunburst on it. looked nice, but it wasnt shiny at all. (had several clear coats on it) so my friend had me invest in shellac which pretty much ruined it in my mind. so after i broke the strings i was playing with i took the thing apart again and got more paint. just the blue. this time i did several coats of primer (even though it was already sealed) then did multiple coats of blue, each coat had a day of drying time with it. after i had it the rich blue color i was looking for i asked a friend of my father's who does a lot of woodwork what he would suggest to do for it and so i went with spar urethane (marine grade) and that worked, almost exactly how i wanted it. so i gave that a close call and gave up waiting on it to be immaculate. i cant have everything look like it was crafted by god.

i ordered mine off ebay and i was expecting the one with the precut headstock but it wasnt so i struggled with getting it cut for a while. my tip here, dont follow the instructions saying that it will be cut with a coping saw- take it to a bandsaw or something and it will save a lot of time and look a lot better.

id take this thing live with me, its my guitar, having put all this work into it its like my baby. the tuners really need replacing, i just havent gotten around to doing it yet. otherwise, the rest of the hardware feels solid, works well. my finish has didnt work exactly as i wanted it, i picked at a spot on it and it started peeling- whoops. otherwise, it would put up to a decent beating. i havent had many problems with the strap, i havent had any problems with it that make me think i couldnt depend on having it without a backup.

havent talked to them, probably never will. unless anyone is paying me, ill call them for what, 5 bucks? any takers?

ive been playing for about a year, i started with acoustic and have used this strat as like a transition instrument into electric. im already planning to pick up a les paul in the near future to make my primary, but if someone tried to steal my guitar, id kick off their head and suck out their soul. i love how its exclusively mine, there isnt one exactly like it, but thats also a sorta bad thing as nobody trusts a self-built guitar to live up to something that fender or someone kicked out. i wish it had room cleaning feature (i live in such a mess). so in conclusion, listen to what the other people have said about the strong and weak points, you really shouldnt even use the neck's screws (the bolt) as they suck extreme, 2 of the 4 of mine stripped and almost ruined my project. eat your vegetables, mind your parents, and stay in school.- overall opinion - good bang for the buck, but that bang can cause a few headaches.- pack some aleve, the pain medication that actually works.

This is by far the best deal and value I have got in a do it yourself strat clone. I bought this of ebay for $90.00 including shipping and handling. I already had the paint, "Du-Pont chromabase 1996" surf green. The vintage fender paint reborn in a non-lacquer formula. This thing was already sealed, but I still primed it with a good Du-Pont sealer primer. By the way if you want a vintage strat look you better buy Du-Pont auto-paint, because this is the paint Fender has used since the 50's. You can find it at your local professional auto paint shop. Anyway back to the guitar. After I sanded the final color coat I put a really thick clear coat, and the thing looks identical to a fender strat with the pre-cut identical strat copy headstock. I trashed the stock pickups and added some seymour duncan quarter-pound strat pickups, and bought a fender roller nut for $18.00, and some fender locking tuners for $40.00, and I believe that made the biggest difference. This thing feels and looks identical like a fender US or Japan made strat now, and I must say I had to spend about $80 bucks more into it, but it was well worth it. If anyone needs help with the paint or anything else drop me a line.