BUILDING A SAGA LP-STYLE


 

Note from GuitarAttack:  This is a good one.  Very cool stripes...looks kind of like the DJ Ashba Signature Les Paul.  Also note that he painted over the binding on the binding -- don't be afraid to try this if you want a specific look.

 

A SAGA LP-Style

From Ed Keener

Papillion, Nebraska

My wife bought me a LC-10 kit for my birthday this year, and I’d never built a guitar before so I really enjoyed the adventure.


The body was pretty smooth so I sanded it with some 400 paper, got some primer on it and started laying down the blue.  The paint process went pretty smooth up to a point.  Then I learned a valuable lesson in making sure you have two hands on your project when you’re moving it around.


 

As you can see in this pic, I was moving the guitar to lay it down to get some paint on the edges and happened to drop it.  It hit my leg, bounced off, flipped over, and landed on the concrete in my garage.  The body landed right on the binding edge and snapped off a small piece.  There was a small indent where the wood chipped out and took some of the paint with it.   

 

 


 
Spent a little time patching it up and sanding it down, thankfully it was before clear coat had started.  After putting in a little time on it, started back on the color and it turned out pretty good.  Couldn’t even tell where the chunk had come out of it.

 

I decided that even though the blue was a nice color I would put some stripes on it.  Taped it all off and laid some silver on top of the blue.  After that it was on to clear coat.  So far up to this point I’d used 2 cans of blue, and a little silver.  The it was two cans of clear lacquer.  Then came the really fun part of sanding.  And more sanding.  And more sanding.

I started with 400, then 800, then 1000, then 1200, then 2000 grit.  Then moved up to some polish.  The shine really started to come through, but you have to take your time on this part and not start getting impatient.

All-in-all it turned out pretty good I think.  I took the silver stripe in the middle all the way up through the headstock.  Need to get some guitar wax to put on it, and I’m going to go back an solder the connections because I noticed a slight buzz through the amp, but overall I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.  I also swapped out the strings for some Ernie Ball’s and tuned it up and started playing it.  Took me about a month to get through the whole process but I had a great time doing.

P.S.  I also put one of the pick-ups in upside down so I’ll have to go back and fix that before soldering the connections.

 

 


 

 

   
Great job, Ed-- Great finish!

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