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.Get more detail about Saga ST-10 S Style Electric Guitar Kit.
No comments:
Post a Comment