Saga st-10

Basswood strat copy. Thick old school neck profile, SSS low quality ceramic pickups, horrible tuners. Maple neck, unknown fretboard wood. Made somewhere in asia. I'm giving it a 10 in this category because a basswood strat body usually cost more than this whole kit.

Sound (after a lot of set up) is sweet, midrangy and "woody" for lack of a better term. Both the body and neck are quite beefy, and wood usually = sustain. The stock PU's are useable, but not pleasant to listen to. Replace them ASAP. I installed some classic alnicos from GFS and the difference is night and day. I have heard a few guitars that I felt sounded better unplugged, so it gets an 8 here. I have also heard many more expensive guitars that sounded much worse.

Here's the rub - get ready to do a whole lot of work. Very few of the holes in the body matched the pickguard or other parts. The neck would not fit into the neck pocket. The pilot holes for the neck joint were nowhere near square, even to each other. The control cavities were "routed" with a semi-sharp rock. The frets needed to be dressed, and the nut was cut too deep on the treble side. The epoxy-like sanding sealer was not sanded flat. I could go on and on...
All that aside, with one of these kits and one of Dan Erlewines' books, new PU's and tuners, you have a pretty damn good guitar. You can toss one of these kits together with the stock parts, spray a quick coat of paint on it and have a good, cheap starter guitar. Or you can use it as a learning tool, and hot rod it like I did. The Saga is now my favorite of my guitars - I even put the Saga decal on the headstock. None of my buddies believe how cheap it was. I take that as a good sign. I am going to give it a poor rating in this category though - mine was not so much a guitar kit as it was a box of mismatched, poorly finished parts. Overall construction is good, finish is very poor.

I wouldn't gig without a backup guitar ever again regardless of brand. Strings break, after all ;)
What few Saga parts my guitar still has are fairly sturdy - bridge and jack, switch, things that usually don't break anyway. Basswood is very soft, and some of the screw holes are on the verge of stripped thanks to my constant tinkering, but a drop or two of super glue fixes that right up. I don't think there is enough Saga left in my guitar for me to report on durability.

LMAO!

I've been playing for about fifteen years now, mostly blues and classic rock. I only discovered strats a couple years ago - I'm usually a Les Paul man.
I didn't buy this kit because I wanted another guitar - it would have been way cheaper to just buy a Squire or something. As a learning tool, it has been invaluable, and now I have a sweet guitar to play as well.
My favorite feature is the three colour 'burst that took me three trys to get "just right";), my second favorite feature would be the neck, which has a nice flat radius and thick beefy profile.
I compare it to every new electric I play, and so far its still my favorite. I play this thing into a Traynor YGM-3 through either a vintage sd-1 or fuzz - normally just clean, as the tone is sweet.
I would definately build another. I may just build the whole Saga lineup - they're cheap, and can be made into excellent instruments.
HOWEVER - if you have no woodworking or "tool" experience, I would hesitate to recomend these kits, if mine is indicitive of their overall quality. These are not Ikea shelves, you have to have some man-skills to put these things together.
"Fantastic Value" is exactly how I would describe these kits. You get a whole guitar to experiment on for less than a Warmoth neck, or decent pedal. And after you've replaced all the crappy stock parts, you'll have a decent parts selection to fix your buddies guitars with - I've made a fair bit of cash so far, and I owe it to Saga and Mr. Erelwine.