The kit arrived well packaged with parts in divided bags. I was mocked by several coworkers who had seen the package in the office and popped into my lab and made bad air guitar moves telling me it was a long way to the top if I want to rock and roll (I was mildly impressed with the AC/DC reference)

With the kit safely home I unpacked the kit using a plastic parts tray to sort the hardware. Following the advise of most Saga builders I decided to assemble the kit before starting the
finishing process. This took the better part of three hours. The guitar went together quickly. The neck fit the pocket in the body beautify. The pick guard is out of alignment by a few millimeters but this is being replaced anyways. I ran into trouble when I tool a closer look at the electronics on the control plate.

I think it was someones first day at the saga factory:

A redundant ground wire was running from the from the volume pot to the tone pot that popped off with the first touch. Snip

A black mystery connector (another ground) had no corresponding wire from the pickup cavity. I thought this was a ground for the bridge but there was another one correctly labeled. Snip

Connections have a bullet style connector and a section of heat shrink tubing, but the ground from the pickups would have required an adapter to accept two bullet connectors. Snip

The last straw was the three way switch that was wired incorrectly the joints looked cold (dull and pitted as did all of the connections for that matter) and the leads from the pickups didn’t bridge the two terminals on each side of the switch. At this point I decided to get out my soldapult and tear all of the connections down and start over. This added about an hour but the guitar sounded 10 times better after I was done.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining at all! I have no idea how this kit can be sold this inexpensively. I was expecting two pots, a cap, switch, jack and a coil of wire in the nicely divided bags containing the other parts. I’m sure saga would have also included a small coil of solder.

I strung the guitar up with the included strings and started the setup process. I dropped the saddle height to get things in the right ballpark, the neck looks great right out of the box. I made quick work of the setup with the exception of the a small problem with the E and A saddle. Intonation on the E and A strings are still a little sharp and I’ll have to cut the tension spring down a bit so I’ll have the clearance to pull the saddle back a few millimeters.

I spent a few minutes adjusting pickup height, and got a decent balance between the bridge and neck output level. Clearance on the neck pickup might be a problem if you really layed into the guitar but I’m usually not a heavy handed player.