| Note from
GuitarAttack: This is what a "stripped" Saga S-Style body looks
like with a new finish. It looks great!
From
Matt Hightower
April 2008
Hi. Thank you for the inspirational pictures and stories of other Saga
Sagas. They helped a great deal.
My Saga Saga is framed around the build of an S-style Saga kit. I purchased
the kit with an additional neck (no substitutions in a Saga kit, I guess).
The neck is a Golden Gate (Saga) S-93 S-Style Unfinished Maple neck and it
came directly from Saga but was ordered by the dealer (www.fiddlerscrossing.com).
Both came within a week of ordering - good for my rural location. I should
also say that the fretwork on the maple fretboard neck was much better than
the neck that came with the kit -- all frets were firmly seated and there
were no sharp edges.
After a substantial (substantial) amount of stripping and sanding I resealed
the body with MiniWax Sanding Sealer which gave it more of the amber color
that I was looking for. After that I applied many coats of Formby's Tung Oil
Finish and then polished with my regular guitar polish. While the body is
made of several pieces of wood, I like the outcome.
I upgraded the tuners by replacing the originals with WD Economy tuners from
Musician's Friend. One of the other nice things about the replacement neck
that I bought was that the screw-holes to hold the tuners in place were not
pre-drilled so I didn't have to fill any holes. The replacement tuners are a
little bigger than the originals though so the holes had to be enlarged a
fair amount.
The original pickups sounded pretty good but I wasn't thrilled with the
white pickguard. So, after some research, I purchased a Mighty Mite MM400TS-SSS
Tortoise with Black Hardware pickguard assembly from Blue Flame Music
(http://stores.ebay.com/Blue-Flame-Music). It arrived 4 or 5 days after
ordering -- another good service experience. The pickguard does not just
drop in however. I think only one screw-hole lined up with the original 11
and I had to trim a little around the neck to fit. I will say, though, it
sounds great -- much better than the original.
All in all, this was a good learning experience and I ended up with a great
sounding and playing guitar.
Matt Hightower
From Guitarattack: Remember -- there are
a number of different spacings on these pickguard screws. Be ready to
fill and redrill!
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