Sunday 15 April 2012

Project #2!

I may have mentioned early on in this blog that my plan once the Marlin is finished is to move on to at least one kit guitar, to familiarise myself with different build styles, electrics and the like. Well, a couple of weeks ago I bought the kit for project number 2!

I'd seen the Saga guitar kits on various websites, and read good reviews, and given that they're a reasonable price (about £140-£190) I thought that'd be a good place to start. They do quite a range of guitar and bass kits, all based on classic models, from Strat, Les Paul and Precision bass through to Flying V (very tempting!) and PRS-style. My original plan was to get a Les Paul or PRS-style one, since that's more my kind of guitar than a Fender-style one, but thought perhaps I'd get a Strat one in the future to learn more about building and setting up a guitar with a tremolo (the music anorak in me wants to call it vibrato, but trem is the "received" term for it!).

However, most of the British sites I've seen that list them, show them as "out of stock" or "limited availability" so I was very happy to see the nice people at Firebox (a site I often use for buying gifts) start selling the Strat and Les Paul ones a few months ago. Before too long though, the Les Paul one had disappeared from their site, sold out I assumed. I checked back last month on a whim to see whether it was back, or whether the Strat one had disappeared too, only to find the Strat kit on sale for just £84! My wife convinced me I should get it right away, so I did, and here it is:


Firebox now don't stock either kit, so although I might not get started on it for a while I'm glad I got it when I did. I've not got much idea what to expect for how it'll turn out, but to get everything I need to build a guitar for £84 is great - bar the paint/lacquer, the body comes unfinished. It should make for a fun project and good experience, and if it turns out well I can always use it for further experimentation with different pickups and electrics.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Steve, so how are you doing with your DIY Strat?
    Some news about my project: I bought a Gibson Les Paul Studio + a 500T bridge pickup + a 496R Neck pickup + the components to modify the electronics (mainly 4 push/Pull pots).
    This weekend I have wired everything the "Jimmy Page #1 Les Paul" style (following the Gibson Diagram). And..... IT WORKS :-)
    I can now switch the humburkers to single coil, configure the pickups in series or parallel and change the phase of one of them. Many more different sounds....
    Please carry on telling us about your projects!!!
    Regards,
    Daniel

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  2. I need to log in to my blog more often! I've only just seen your comment.

    That sounds really good, perhaps I'll try that on a future project.

    The Strat is still in its box - the bass is really the test bed for trying everything, especially the painting, as it'll matter less if I make a hash of it! So I don't really plan to start on the Strat until I'm done with the bass.

    I did manage to do a little more sanding on the cavities in the bass back in May/June, but not much and nothing worth posting about. Life's got in the way since, but I'm hoping that I'll have some free time in the next few weeks to get back to it! So watch out for updates :-)

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