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Here's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. I've been playing guitar now for over 33 years, but never got around to going electric. I'd settled my heart on a Gibson Les Paul, however given my budget constraints, I had a choice of an el-cheepo copy, or a Saga kit. The kit idea turned my crank and sounded like a lot of fun! First order of business was to do some research, what's out there and what do I look out for. The Saga saga's and Mattocaster pages at Guitar Attack really helped and gave me many good pointers which were put to good use once my LC-10 arrived in the mail. Sound Bites:
Builders Notes What I've learned: When I first assembled my SAGA I had to adjust the bridge and stop bar quite high off the body of the guitar. When I tried to adjust it to where it "looked" right, the strings buzzed. What to do? I couldn't get my action down to 1/16" at the 12th fret without buzzing. I put a half of a business card at the edge of the body in the neck pocket and that addressed my intonation and tuning issues as well as the high bridge and tailpiece locations.
The Tune-o-Matic bridge design allows you to compensate for neck angle, if the neck is angled toward the back of the guitar, then the bridge needs to be adjusted up to compensate. However, while the bridge can be adjusted up to 1/2 inch, my experience suggests if you have to adjust more than 1/4 inch away from the body, it is time to adjust the neck angle. Tailpiece/stop block position affects break angle of the strings over the bridge. A steeper break angle gives the strings more "feel", shallower angle makes them feel "lighter". Tailpiece/stopbar should not be adjusted so low that strings come in contact with the bridge housing this will cause string breakage. While there's no general rule for tailpiece height, 1/4-3/8" above the body is in the ballpark.
According to Gibson USA "Adjustable Stopbar Tailpiece. The stopbar tailpiece may be adjusted up or down to change the downward pressure across the bridge. There is usually no need to adjust the stopbar unless the strings are moving out of the saddles, in which case the stopbar should be lowered." Now that those problems have been addressed, I've discovered that my acoustic players hands can pull it out of tune just by bottoming the string to the fretboard. I'll now need to dress the frets to address that, or compensate my playing style to grab a bit more gently. After mucking about with the nut to adjust the action I finally decided I'd messed up the stock plastic one beyond the point of no return. GraphTech sell pre-slotted replacement nuts for literally hundreds of guitars. Sadly the SAGA LC-10 isn't listed. I was able to find a very close match for the SAGA nut by measuring and cross-referencing the GraphTech catalog. Part No. PQ-6225-00 Tusq Nut is a perfect fit for the SAGA neck. I ordered direct from the Graphtech website and it arrived in the mail within a week. I had to sand about 1 mm from the underside near the low "E" and about 1.5 mm under hi high "E" to get the action just right. Now I no longer get that annoying twangy sound from my open strings.
Dear Chris,
My son and I built the Saga LC-10 this summer in three days and we love it. It fit together perfect from the box and it looks good, but we are having an electrical problem I have been unable to solve despite repeated attempts. It produces a very loud electrical hiss when plugged into an amp, with or without us touching it. If we touch (with a finger) either the bridge, tailpiece, pods, female cord connector, or the rectangular (metal) pickup plates, it hisses even louder than when we aren't touching anything. I I have even (temporarily) hooked up wires between various things, and reread the schemmatics numerous times to see that I am correct.......all to no avail. Before I go out and spend $200 to trash the whole electrical system, please advise. Your site didn't mention you had any electrical problems, so I'm stumped. - Brian and Christopher (Allentown, Pa.) Hey there Brian and Christopher! What a fantastic project for you and your son. You’re right I didn’t mention that problem, but I certainly did experience it. I only had it with the neck pickup though. The SAGA wiring leaves a lot to be desired, consistent coloring of the wires especially. If you have a multi-meter you want to check the pickup leads. Disconnect the pickup wires, connect one lead of the meter to the base plate of the pickup and then test the pickup wires each in turn, there should be no resistance for the ground wire and something between 7k and 9k for the live wire. I suspect that SAGA has you connecting the ground wire where the live wire should be and vice versa. Reverse the wiring on the pickups and the hiss should go away. On my guitar it was easy to switch the connectors since they both pointed the same way, I’ve heard others say they needed to clip the wires and solder them together. Also double check the bridge ground once everything else is set right. I also recommend getting the Les Paul wiring Upgrade from Guitar Fetish, it includes new POTS, switch, jack and capacitor. http://store.guitarfetish.com/colespaupelc.html I used that in my guitar and it made a huge difference in the sound. I used the schematic available for download at Stewart Macdonald and did the modification to allow independent volume control of both pickups while on the middle position of the selector switch. I've combined their diagrams onto a single PDF file Here
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