Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit ST-Style

Just recieved this. I assembled it to determine how much work it needs. It's "playable" as it is, but with some general faults and noticable low craftmanship.

=== WOOD WORK / FRETS ===
- The body is of 2 pieces of dark-ish wood, but asymmetrical. Not very well filled and sanded.

The neck seems okay / fine, but the fretboard looks like a lot of thin boards glued together, making a lot of horizontal lines visible. For the price, I guess that's okay. The neck looks like it's perfectly straight, or even has a tiny backbow (the truss rod is loose). I think it's supposed to have a miniscule amount of relief, at least while having strings on. I hope that time will fix this. Probably will.

The finish on the headstock and the back of the neck is okay. The bolt-on holes on the body are fairly even, but they're mis-aligned on the neck. Not sure if this will be a problem. The frets seem okay. Seems like they're a bit off and rough, will be giving them a nice levelling and crowning.

The neck pocket is routed badly. It has a "top" 2/3 into the pocket, where it seems like the "plane has shifted" during the routing. The action is VERY low, even though the saddles are as far up as they can go. I'll need to somehow try to fix the angle of the neck pocket.

== HARDWARE ==
The tuners are usable, but feel horrible. There are spots where you can almost feel something grinding, and they rattle. Haven't played enough to comment on tuning stability. Will surely change these.

The nut is plastic. No comments. You know what you get. It's okay, but not amazing.

The bridge / trem block / saddles look and feel thin, lightweight and cheap. This is to be expected, but I might do something about that. The bridge might be sitting wrong. I have to fix the neck angle and check again. The low E is tightened almost all the way to ensure good intonation, the first 3 strings (G B E) are as far towards the nut, that they hit the mounting screws, and the strings are still flat at 12th fret.

The pickups are crap (sorry). I have a pretty high end Ibanez, and actually prefer the pickups on the HB kit, but that's because of the strat-ish sound, not the quality. Will surely change these at some point. Haven't found any errors with the switches, knobs and jack plug, but I'm sure they're worse than if you buy something expensive.

== GENERAL FINISH ==
Almost all of the screw-hole "groups" has something that's just a little off, but not so bad that the guitar can't be assembled. On a lot of the metal stuff there's unsanded / unfinished small parts of metal here and there, especially in drilled holes. The wood work (as said before) doesn't look finished. The headstock isn't cut out to shape. That's fine, supposed to be like that.

== FINAL THOUGHTS ==
There's a lot of stuff "wrong" with this guitar. Much more, than the price difference between this and a good Squier, that only needs to be setup properly.

In general I don't regret getting this kit, as I'm using it to teach myself basic / newbie luthery, and the kit should be just fine for that. If you're not interested in fiddling this much yourself, get a Squier or a used mex strat instead.

I truly don't regret getting this kit (yet), as it will serve it's purpose. I'm okay with spending a considerate amount of time buying and building tools, and fiddling with the kit. Apart from the asynchronous body wood joint,

I actually like the color as it is (no idea if it's the actual color or just the filler), and will be sanding and finishing it with just oil.

I plan to upgrade:
- Tuners
- Pickups (and pickguard?)
- The entire bridge / tremolo part
- Maybe the other electronics, at some point.

I know, that it will become quite expensive, but the resale value of the additional parts are said to be good, and if I can get a GREAT guitar out of this mediocre kit, along with teaching myself some stuff that's usable on more high end guitars, I've won.

Result: DIY PROJECT, NOT READY TO USE
Quality / condition: Usable but crappy
Value vs. others: Low
Value for me: High
Price vs quality: Great

Jeg købte et Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit ST-Style for at prøve at bygge en guitar og dermed lære lidt mere om guitarbygning inden jeg selv begynder helt fra bunden.

kroppen og halsen var af en OK kvalitet.

Pickupperne var ikke noget at råbe hurra for.

Heller ikke det elektriske.

Jeg har skifte begge dele og efter at have samlet og indstillet den - har jeg fået en udemærket øve guitar.

Kan anbefale sættet tilprisen. Du får ikke en kvalitets guitar,
men et mega sjovt byggesæt