Saga TC-10 Electric Guitar Kit - T Style

My favourite Tele look a like kit , I swapped the necks from the TC-10 with the one from the TT-10 kit. I preferred the maple neck for this model. The rest remained the same for the painting , polishing and assembly. I did do the measuring and checks before swapping the necks the only difference was in the rosewood and maple finish of the two. Both Guitars look great and sound fantastic.

I have been a regularly gigging guitarist for the last 40 years. I own 13 name brand guitars. I decided to take a shot at putting together a kit guitar. I was looking for something fun to do that would end up as wall decoration. I always planned to continue using one of my American Teles, my Strat, and my LP as my primary axes for gigs and recording. This kit guitar plays so well that it is now my primary gigging guitar. I like it so much that I bought two more kits during the Black Friday deal. (The attached pictures show two of them. I have yet to put together the third guitar.) I am stunned by how good this guitar is for the price. Now for some details. What is good about the guitar: - The neck is simply great. It plays so nicely. It appears to be actual maple too. The frets are already dressed nicely, although they are a little sharp at the endpoints. - The action and the truss rod don’t need to be touched. They are nearly perfect out of the box. - The intonation is spot on. - Every guitar I have ever purchased has needed to be setup, but these needed less setup work than any of them. I had to slightly adjust the height of two strings to stop some buzzing, and I needed to raise the pickups to increase the gain, but that’s all I needed to do. - The cuts on the body are exactly where they should be. No extra drilling was necessarily. - The pickups are better than I expected. I planned to replace them with a name brand (I like S.D. PUPs) but these sound quite good. I may upgrade them eventually but it isn’t necessary to do so. What’s not so great: - I found the tuners to be unusable. They are very stiff and they slip. I replaced them after two gigs. I couldn’t live with the stock tuners anymore. - The string guides on the headstock wobble and have sharp edges. I decided to replace those at the same time I replaced the tuners. - The pickguard isn’t an exact match to a real Tele. I bought a replacement pickguard only to find that I needed to get creative about screwing it on the body. Overall, I got much more than I expected from this purchase.

I did a lot of research on Telecaster guitar kits before I ordered the Saga TC-10. This kit was very favorably reviewed, and it arrived as advertised. Very well packaged and complete assembly instructions were included. The guitar body and neck are very high quality, and fit together perfectly. I made a few modifications to my personal tastes, certainly not required to build a great guitar. I swapped out the included string tuners for original Fender tuners, and I modified the body for through the body string routing like Fender Telecasters have. The guitar sounds awesome!

tl;dr Solid kit, happy with result, be prepared to invest in hardware. I got this kit and put it together. I took the pick guard, neck, and tuners and chucked those in the woods so the aardvarks could eat them (along with all the car radios that seemingly every young person removes and tosses in the woods before the ink even dried on the title). I purchased a Fender pick guard in black ($17 on Amazon). The pilot holes didn't quite line up. Drilled new ones, installed. The selector plate no longer lined up to the pilot holes, so drilled new ones for that, installed it, and it fits and works well. I picked up a cheap Chinese knockoff maple neck which had only tuner holes drilled. That was about $40 on Amazon. I had to buy new tuners from a local music store, nickel coated, $40. These are so much better than the cheap ones that come in the set. Because this is a mod and not part of the scope, I'll ignore the details there. Had I kept the kit pieces, it would be an easy install, so no issues there. Wiring was easy (invest in an ice-pick for this project, or improvise with what you have. Don't thread the wires by hand!!). It is grounded on the bridge. Bridge install and selector plate install was also easy. The bridge looks cool, the selector and knobs feel solid. The strings go into the bridge but NOT rear guitar thru-body like proper Fenders. I see no reason why, if you had the skill and desire, you could not set it up that way, assuming you purchased more hardware. The directions were clear enough, decently labeled. I had no problem with following the instruction after reviewing them 3 times before I did any work. Once the guitar was assembled, with help from a guitar hobbyist friend, we set the neck, intonation, and action. Quite satisfied with the results. 12th fret is within a cent or two of being dead center tuned, it has low action, plays well, and in tune, no buzzing. The strap buttons hold my Ernie Ball strap snugly. It has a solid weight to it and sits well on your shoulder (unlike say an SG). Sound wise, it has punchy rhythm and twangy lead. I'm very surprised by the pick ups. I play mainly punk rock and other rock styles. I expected to replace them but don't believe I will. I haven't decided if I'm going to proceed in painting it. It looks slick as it is. Now some bad: as cool as the bridge looks, the high e string doesn't sustain at all and looks to be because of the bridge. I'll have to replace the bridge which I plan on spending $20 or so to replace. I contrasted the design of this guitar with a Mexican Fender Tele. The shape is slightly different (though I didn't notice until I did the comparison) and the body is maybe between 1/32nd to 1/16th of an inch thinner (guessing, didn't measure). Overall, I love my guitar and I'll be getting more Saga kits in the future.

I purchased this guitar kit because first of all I needed a (hopefully) decent guitar. Second, I love telecasters and strats but could could not afford a good one... So I got this one, hoping I could manage to mold it somewhat into a fender. I love DIY projects, so I was thrilled naturally. Finally when I received it, the body was spectacular and the neck too, although it was a little crooked at around the high e 19th fret area (which potentially lead to fret buzz that I've not able to resolve yet). The pickups are solid but the wiring and hardware were not premium as expected. I bought some Mr Gearhead tuners and that was it. The only part I had to improvise were the peghead tuner holes which were too small for the new brushings and the ones they provided!! I enlarged them however thanks to my dads drill press. Overall, the process was easy but not as easy perhaps as advertised. I'm am very satisfied with the final result which is a custom telecaster! As for the sound however... It would depend on how you set it up. It is generally very good for the price.