Guitar Kits Compare Prices And Buy

Review by Johny Bottom:

First of all, 8th Street Music is extremely fast. I ordered this kit through Amazon.com, and the third party dealer was 8th Street Music. I ordered this thing on a Thursday morning, and it was on my doorstep Saturday! With regular shipping! There was absolutly no waiting to get started on this.

It was packed very well. Nothing broken or chipped, all the pieces were there, and the instructions were helpful and informative.

I really took my time painting it and cutting the headstock into a custom design. It took me a month to complete what with all the sanding, coating, resanding, extra color and clear coats, and polishing.

Now you can put this guitar together right out of the box in about 30 minutes to an hour and have a working guitar, but who wants a plain old natural wood guitar when you can go crazy and make it into whatever you want? The body and neck come sealed, so you do not have to prep the wood or even use primer. It is ready to paint right out of the box. You even get a cord for your input jack, and they throw in a set of strings too.

You don't have to be a world renowned luthier to put together your own guitar from Saga. You don't even have to solder the wires, they are all plug in. You can remove the plug caps and solder them if you wish though. After assembling this guitar, you will learn all about guitar electronics and set up. I had to adjust the truss rod just a little bit, but it played great after that with an awesome action. And hey guess what, they even throw in an alan wrench with the truss rod. You get everything you need in one little box. Buy yours today, build you rown guitar, and be a REAL guitar hero.

Review by Mr. Wilson:

I purchased the Saga LC-10 LP guitar kit as a gift for my 11 year old son who expressed an interest in playing the guitar. After investigating the el cheapo guitar/amplifier combo packs I made the decision to purchase the Saga kit to hopefully provide something more robust than the low end guitars, and more importantly to teach my son all about the inner workings of a guitar.

This kit includes everything you need to start playing a guitar except for the amplifier. The downside is that the rats nest wiring harness which although easy to use provides lots of opportunities to generate electrical noise/buzz when connected to an amplifier. After doing some research I decided to start from scratch and upgrade the internal wiring, potentiometers, capacitors, and switches. I also purchased copper shielding which I installed in all of the cutouts and then grounded everything together. Although this effort added another -100 to the cost of the guitar it also made it much more enjoyable. I can crank the amplifier to the maximum and there is no buzzing or other noise from the guitar.

If you plan to add a colored lacquer finish as I did it will take several weeks before the guitar is ready to play because you need to allow the finish to dry between coats. If you are anxious to play you might want to consider a ready to go guitar.

Since I had no prior guitar experience I had to rely heavily on the many web resources dedicated to the building and setup of guitars. I even found one web site that had a much better set of instructions for building and more importantly setting up the guitar. In the end the information I gathered allowed me to use the basic Saga parts to build a guitar that is very functional, sounds and looks great, and gets lots of compliments from everybody who sees and hears it. My son is now happily making a lot of progress learning how to play the guitar using the books I ordered from Amazon.

Review by Tap Ng:

Initial expectation was assemble a guitar that I could make look cool. Picked up a kit at a local shop and was surprised at the wood quality it was a bit better than expected. This unit was solid wood don't expect this in a squire. Yes, the hardware is cheap, especially the tuning pegs you will want to change these out if you are serious about the sound. The bridge setup was on par for guitars of this level and more than adequate. A real bridge will cost you more than the kit,. The pickups are much nicer than expected. I'm going to change them out eventually. Biggest grip is that the pre-drilled holes are not always aligned correctly and can ndrot be fix easily.Bottom line is when you finished you have guitar that plays like one worth 0 to 0 hundred dollars, but education and experience are priceless. Good if you want experience building, but not good for those who need a guitar. After building the HT-10 I can't understand why the Mexi-strats are so poorly assembled, but I've put 0+ of sweat equity into this project. Next time I'll tweak a solid base guitar than building from kit.

Review by K. Stewart:

I bought the Tele version from Saga. The G- and B-string tuner holes in the headstock were drilled too close together, making it impossible to fit the G tuner to the headstock and making it impossible to tune the G string accurately. Also, one wire was too short, so I had to supply my own. The distributor wouldn't correct the problem, told me to contact Saga. Saga never responded. The guitar is useless (wasting not only the money for the purchase but the cost of the paint, hours invested, etc). You don't want this product!

Review by jonnybravo:

I decided after reading about these guitars on the net, to try and build my own. (go to guitarattack for examples) Not the highest quality guitar but more than suitable as a starter build. The neck is in great shape, the frets are smooth and well seated. The body does have the worlds strongest sanding sealer on it. I sanded the sealer down so that it wasn't that thick. There were a few bubbles under the sealer that I had to fill after sanding it down. The body itself was three pieces of basswood glued together. I've read others claim 5 or 6 pieces on theirs but mine had 3. by the way don't be afraid of basswood, alot of 0 and 0 guitars use this wood. At the time of writing this I haven't fully built the guitar so I can't comment of sound and the electronics. I did a dry fit and all the holes lined up and the neck fit the pocket fine. You can find these cheaper elsewhere but I trust amazon and their partners more than ebay anyday. It did ship in a flimsy box but didn't have any damage.

Review by Jc Holman III:

The beauty of Leo F's original electric guitar design is that anyone could assemble it's components into a finished electric guitar using hand tools, and basic mechanical skills. That makes kits based on his designs a great idea.

The more time you want to spend learning how to adjust and set up your guitar, the better playing instrument you'll be rewarded with.

I've been playing electric guitar for 30 years, and I did not find anything actually defective in this kit. The pickgaurd was slightly malformed, but it does not affect the playability in the slightest. The pickgaurd and tuners were a little cheap, and I chose to replace them, but they were certainly playable.

The rest of the components were of very high quality, as good or better than anything coming from Fender's Mexico plant. The body has an extra tummy contour on the back, similar to an "S" style guitar, and the bridge is a top loader, instead of Leo's string-thru design.

One area that will require a little more than basic skill and hand tools is shaping the peghead. If you choose to skip this labor intensive, not-for-the-squeamish step, you will be playing your new guitar with a comically large paddle shaped peghead

Considering the value for the money, the fun and learning of do-it-yourself, and the quality of the parts, I really wanted to give 5 stars... but the cheap tuners and deformed pickgaurd made it 4 stars.

I never contacted the vendor or Saga for a replacement pickgaurd, so I have no idea what their response might have been. I had already chosen to upgrade the pickgaurd in a different color.

Review by popmusicfan:

First of all, this is not a Fender Telecaster. It may look like one, but it's not one. It is, though, a very workable kit, fun to build, and sounds and plays reasonably well. In fact, it does have the Telecaster twang to it. In various reviews of Saga kits that you'll read on the Internet you'll read about cheap electronics and cheap strings. I wasn't thrilled with the strings that came with the kit I built, but they're not terrible. And, the potentiometers, wiring, and shielding may not be the greatest, but everything works, was pre-wired correctly, and the pickups are pretty strong and well balanced. It's a little tricky feeding the wires from the pickups into the chamber where the potentiometers and pick-up switch are, but assembling the Saga kits is not rocket science. This is about a half-a-step more difficult than the Saga PB-10 (electric bass) kit, but that's really only because of feeding wiring through channels and the fact that you need to be careful that you get the bolt-on neck put on squarely. One thing to keep in mind, the body is treated with a sealer, so staining is not real practical, unless you sand the sealer off. Painting, or even just a lacquer over the bare, sealed wood works well. If you're looking for a reasonably priced electric guitar kit as a fun project, or to get more of an insider's knowledge of how electric guitars go together, these are worth considering. One other thing to keep in mind, though, you have to be prepared to do your own set up of string heights, intonation, and so on, but that's part of the experience! OK, so it's not a Telecaster, but you get to have some fun, just a little challenge, and it's way under 0!

Review by S. Petty:

I recently ordered one of these Grizzly telecaster kits due to always wanting to build my own guitar, and the very low price of this kit. My kit arrived 3 days after placing the order. All of the pieces were there, and all were in good shape. I was impressed at the quality of the woods. I knew there would have to be corners cut somewhere, and discovered that the tuners were kinda cheap, and the control pots were small and probably a little weak. I decided to go ahead and just build the guitar as-is, and not replace any of the kit pieces yet. The body was rough sanded and sprayed with sanding sealer already, but needed final sanding before finish was applied. The neck was the same, but was sanded smoother than the body was from the factory. I used a coping saw and a Dremel Tool to shape the headstock into a tele headstock. If you use the kit turners, and since the pre-drilled holes for the tuners are spaced farther apart that on a standard tele, you must slightly make the headstock shape longer if you wish to make a tele shaped head, otherwise the high E string tuner mount will not fit on the headstock. I then sanded the body and neck and just sprayed on several coats of clear Nitro. After taking care to measure and drill all holes correctly, the guitar assembled well. I built this kit over the weekend, and did not run across any nasty surprises with this kit. After completing my kit, the guitar needed a good setup. After about a full day of making adjustments to the truss rod and action and intonation, I got this guitar to play very well. If you are a tinkerer, and if you already perform your own setups to your current guitars, then this kit will serve you well. Even with stock kit parts, the guitar sounds like a tele, plays well and looks great. But, being a kit, this guitar can be either a very high quality guitar, or a sorry piece of crap, it all depends on how well YOU make it. I am well pleased with this product, and will be building my second kit soon! I will, however, probably be replacing the plastic nut with a TUSQ, and the tuners may be upgraded soon as well, along with the electronic components. Even if you decide to not use some of the kit pieces and decide to upgrade from the start, you can use this kit to build a very fine guitar for under 0 !!