http://www.dpbolvw.net/ol97shqnhp48A8EBCC4658DB7A7 All right so I built a Saga guitar kit and I took pictures along the way.  The Saga is one of the most popular “build your own guitar kits”, the price is right and the quality is decent.  The cheapest component is probably the tuners, the neck is not bad, mine needed a little adjusting (more on that later).  The body is glued up of separate pieces it’s pretty well done (at least mine was) and I liked the way it looked without any paint.  The neck comes with a paddle head stock you can cut out yourself, it’s pre-finished like the body. I don’t know what they finished it with but it’s durable.  The body was very smooth pretty much paint ready.  That doesn’t mean you should paint it before you put it together, when you build guitar kits you always put it together first and make sure everything fits.  I built a Telecaster model but you can build a Les Paul, PRS, or Strat.  There are some other guitar kits to build out there, but even if you want to build from your own parts, the Saga guitar kit gets you all the parts for about $100, that’s the cost of a body if you bought everything separately.

Saga Guitar Kit Box

Here’s the guitar kit just like it comes in the mail.  I was expecting it to be a lot bigger.  You can see the paddle headstock, you cut that to whatever shape you want.  All the little components were separately packaged, screws, springs, etc.

Guitar Parts from Guitar Fetish

I decided to get gold hardware, my original idea was to paint the guitar black and have gold components.  I got them from Guitarfetish, I highly recommend them.  They’re got great parts at a good price.  Look for their sales for even better deals.  A lot of people have had some good stuff to say about their pickups too.

Saga Telecaster bridge vs. Guitarfetish bridge

Look at the thickness of the Saga bridge (silver) vs. the Guitarfetish bridge (gold).  The Guitarfetish bridge is a standard thickness Tele bridge.  The Saga bridge is much beefier.  This kind of shows you what kind of quality the Saga has.  It’s not awesome, but they’re not toy parts either.  This bridge thickness discrepancy comes back to haunt me later… Tune in next time.

If you built the kit as is, you’d only need a screwdriver, utility knife, and coping saw. I had some problems with the guitar fetish parts, so I had to use some big boy tools.

Here’s the tools I used:

• Screwdriver
• Utility Knife
• Jigsaw
• Drill
• Router (only because I decided to modify)
• Chisels
• Four in Hand (wood file)
• Hole reamers (again, because I modified)

Go to Part 2 of Build an Electric Guitar.