BUILDING A SAGA T-STYLE

From Heinz Dziurowitz

Hello, my name is Heinz Dziurowitz. I've built quite a number of guitars in the past, normally cutting out my own bodies and necks. It's been awhile since I built anything so thought a Saga kit might be fun.

Found one on Ebay, 99 bucks free shipping, Tele style. My favorite. My original plan was to do a tobacco burst but the body had quite a few knots, looked like a three piece but decided to go for a solid color.

This one came with no screw holes pre-drilled except for the back of the body where the neck plate goes, which is fine as it made it easier for me to line everything up the way I like. The neck would not fit in the neck pocket so took a good amount of shaving wood from the pocket but ended up with a nice solid fit. The odd thing to me was the spacing for the tuners was about 3/4 inch more than standard, no big deal but different. I found the tuners to be fine, better than I had thought from reading other reviews. I tossed the tuners' back covers because I like the open look and makes it easier to tighten the set screws if ever needed.

All in all everything went together with no problems, the frets need a lot of filing, the 4th fret actually had a smaller bead than the others, If I had noticed before filing I would have replaced it as I have tons of fret wire from my old building days. Once the frets were dressed it made all the difference in the world, the neck has a good solid feel, plays as well as any of the other 25 guitars I have. The most amazing thing to me was I had to make no bridge adjustments at all, action and intonation were spot on, only had to cut the nut down a little from all the fret filing. Soldering all the connections was no problem. The sound of the pickups are actually good, a Tele neck pickup always sounds muddy and weak to me so I normally remove the chrome cover so it can breath. This one sounded pretty good so will just leave it the way it is.

Decided to make a custom decal to finish it off. All in all it was fun, didn't spend any extra money except a few bucks for some paint and ended up with a very nice playing and sounding one of a kind instrument, pretty cool.
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We sent a note to Heinz asking for more information, and this is the response we got.

Hi John,

Thanks for mentioning the decal, amazing what you can do in Photoshop.

The paint was Krylon from Wal-Mart. The color reminded me of TV yellow so decided to give it a try. I did do a few clear coats and a light buffing that left a nice satin finish which I thought looked nice.

I attached another picture. (You can see my Vintage Re-Issue Strat in the background looking a little jealous) I have already started some mods. I added an extra magnet to the bridge p-up which boosted the output and added some midrange, sounds very close to a Fender Vintage re-issue p-up I have in another Tele. This left the neck p-up a little weak so I made one out of an old Strat neck p-up with the cover removed and modified the mounting tabs to fit the slot in the pickguard. This looks very much like the Tele p-up with the chrome cover removed. There is an insert in the picture showing the p-up detail. The neck p-up really has some output so was able to lower it to match the volume of the bridge unit and achieve a very smooth blues tone in the neck position while having a nice Tele bite in the bridge.

After playing this for the last week I really like the feel of the neck and everything seems balanced. To answer your question I don't think I would have done anything differently. The quality of the kit is better than I would have expected and am happy with the results.

Thanks for the Consideration!
Heinz

 

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