SAGA T-Style Electric Guitar Builders Kit

Anyone build one of these? If so, did you feel it was worthwhile or should you have just spent the bucks on an Agile, SX or Squier.

I'm thinking that this might be a good way for me to learn more about guitar setup, etc.

It's a great way to start learning about how guitars are built, wired and setup.

i built one from a kit by an english company called brandoni. it cost me

If you just want an inexpensive kit to put tigether they are usually ok. You can easily do better if you are looking for a quality guitar kit. If you plan on upgrading parts you usually will come out spending less by just buying one of the quality kits from one of the other manufacturers.

one example is you can get the carvin kit and have a nice guitar that you won't need to upgrade anything unless you just want to. You can also call and get about any wood option they offer if you don't want the standard kit offered. there are also a couple other models offered in kit on request.

http://www.carvin.com/products/group.php?CID=KBN

Gotta agree.

I've built several Bolt kits now, for myself and for customers. It makes a VERY good guitar without any serious woodworking skills needed that is easy to modify.

BigBone---"kit on request"? More info, please!

Thanks for the input. I'm looking for something to learn a bit with, not necessarily create an heirloom I was thinking of using this as a hands on experience builder vs building a high quality guitar. Odds are very good that I'll worry more about setup with this kit than I will about finish and appearance. I just have some very nice equipment that I am squeamish about tweaking and turning the knobs on. figured that this might be a great way to do it.

I bought a Titan bass guitar for about $45, basically the shipping, from national music supply online. There are others selling the exact thing. I got a 0.99c that had scratchy pots, a nut that wasn't put on well and basically needs a little work to fix these. The neck pocket was clean and free of goo looking unpolished paint, the neck a one piece maple, not to bad sounding actaully. Though I suck at playing bass.

I am sure they are the same as the saga, they have a basswood body I am sure due to the lack of wood grain and slight neck heaviness of the guitar. I got a peach colored one because i didn't know they had them on there in other colors know and then. Otherwise I would have waited. I figured it was a deal due to the silly paint color, but it turned out to be just the scratchy pots, they had other colors on later in the month that went for .99 too. It has decent tuners on it, better than I thought.

You can take it apart and repaint, rebuild it after maybe changing the wires or pickup or pots. You can varnish the neck and make it better. You can do the repairs, like mess with the nut to size it (I had to shim it to stop buzz with a lower action) and basically have fun with it!

Or, you can take out the gig bag, plug in the cable that came with it to your sound card mic input with a radio shack adapter and jam through your speakers first after checking out the website a website that has a tuner on it.

This is essentially the same thing the difference is the paint on the body. You will have to strip the paint if you wish a different color. But you save on buying primer as you can sand only down to the primer and paint on top with color of choice.

get the sx, you can always take it apart. the saga kits make pretty bad guitars

I've built several saga kits, the tele was the probably the one I was most happy with as finished.

The body will be a multi piece basswood deal. Not very lively and will look best finished in an opaque color. I might eventually get a Stewmac 1 peice ash body for it.

The tuners are pretty bad, I'd recommend getting a good set right off the bat.

The pick-ups are nothing special, but the rest of the wiring, pots, switches, is OK.

Neck was OK, I had to do the normal setup on the nut, and I think I had one high fret to level.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/searchresults.aspx?q=guitar+kit&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

If you are wanting to build a kit, you may like these a little better. They use alder instead of basswood, which is closer to the original Fender stuff for their Strat and Tele. The Tele is about $129 and the Strat on sale for about $135.

It is kind of a novelty but it is a playable guitar, they have one on the page that is a full size guitar with a little smaller body and a built in amp with speaker in the body, in a kit form for about $65! This is cheap and will also let you a learn a little about installing a preamp, even though this one is a full amp it will be much the same aside form the speaker.

I have no clue on quality, the catalog has decent rep as far as I know and I think my dads cousin ordered from them, not sure. They have other stuff for guitars too, parts and fret wire. Amps are way over priced I think, but the parts are good. Flame maple veneers are about $10. They also have a good deal on fret wire, although it may be of the softer cheaper kind. Great for a makig a bunch of dulcimers or learning re-retting on an old cheap guitar.

I'd like to hear from someone who built the Grizzly kit.

Never ordered a guitar from them, but have ordered lots of tools from there. I just might check that kit out. From all appearances, it looks to have better hardware and wood used. Their CEO is a luthier and may have some influence on their kits. It does look like all of your alignment, drilling and mounting are pretty manual on this kit with little done for you. That might be a better kit to actually learn from. Their pdf manual for the kit looks pretty good.

I got a build-it-yourself sledgehammer kit from Home Depot. The head was too light so I replaced it, and then i broke the handle, so I replaced that. But it's a really nice sledgehammer now.

I built a Saga T style last winter.

Three biggest gripes:

The tuners. They wouldn't fit end to end with the predrilled peg holes. I used some from a squier strat I wanted to upgrade anyway. Its probably just as well cause the kit tuners look very cheap.

I had to trim the pick guard to get it to fit.

Its unstainable because of the sealer they apply at the factory.

That being said, I like the results and it was a good exercize. It was the only guitar I played for a month.

My conclusion: Plan on replacing the tuners and figure that into your costs. try to resist any other upgrades for when you build a better guitar.

Hows the sustain?

Not very pleased with the kit guitars myself. I have tried about all of them. IMHO you would be much more pleased with parts from WD or even better stuff from Allparts. Allparts bodies and necks are Lic by fender and are made in Japan to a much higher standard than mighty mite and most others. You can get finished or unfinshed necks and bodies.

They even carry real fender and gibson replacement parts. I don't know how much you were wanting to spend but I have built Strats with Allparts parts that could compare to Fender USA RI even with Fender Custom Shop Pickups. You may spend more but you will have a Guitar that you could play and be Happy with for Years.

The Bolt Plus and C66 have been ordered in kit form by some forum members. Some people even get the thing all optioned out and finished out to save a few bucks by putting it together themselves . In the past have even done DC models unfinished with no pickups etc or even had guitars made from customer supplied wood but I suspect "they knew somebody".

The bad thing is that not all the operators there know what they are doing and .. Carvin changes their mind about what they will and won't do on a whim it seems sometimes. If interested, ask over at the http://www.carvinmuseum.com forum and find out who is the "current" best person to ask for at Carvin.

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