BUILDING A SAGA LP-STYLE

Hi my name is Jon Schaal, a couple months ago I decided it was time for a  new guitar. I have Strat that I and for some time now and I needed a new sound. So I was thinking about a les Paul or semi hollow f hole guitar and then it hit me “why don’t I build a guitar”? So I looked up guitar kits and of course, up comes Saga guitar builder kits I check it out and they have Les Paul model I thought it was cool. So I bought one; now I don’t recommend this site to any one:  (email submitter for name of company). They had the worst type of shipping.  When I got the box it was damaged. When I opened the box nothing was damaged so I wasn’t that mad but it wasn’t until later that I found out a lot of missing things or parts that didn’t fit, so my father and I went on a mission to find the right parts

Anyways when we started doing the guitar I didn’t like the dot inlays so I bought some pearl inlays from none other than Stewart MacDonald. Neither I nor my dad has done inlays before so I was praying for them to come out ok.  Well they did come out good -- really good too.

Now for the paint job... well it was the ever popular cherry sunburst.  We ordered the toner form once again Stewart MacDonald. I also found out that the cap for the switch was missing and the backs for the wiring were all scratched. I was mad but my dad ordered a big sheet plastic from Johnson plastic and made some backs that looked a whole lot better. In the end we put 9-10 coats of lacquer on the body and neck, put everything to together and then I find out that the wiring was messed up.  The wires were breaking so we had to fix that too. But we did and I had no problems with it.

I was surprised with the way it sounded.  There weren’t any dead frets and it plays like champ. I’m happy with it and think my next project will be a T-Style.



Note:  Concerning the inlays, Stewart MacDonald has instructions online on how to build a box to hold the neck in place so we could drill out the holes for the pearl inlays and route for the new inlays.  It is important to note that they did not pull the frets to install these inlays!  Wow!


With the money put in to this project I could have bought a real Les Paul but I had fun doing this.


Thank you, Jon
two-eyed-monster@hotmail.com
 

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