The wood pieces were of decent quality and fit together perfectly. The neck was straight, but unfortunately with plenty of high frets: some leveling had clearly been done at the factory, but with poor results, and I had to do a complete fret leveling and re-crowning. After that, the nut was about as low as it can be, so I suspect the neck would not have been really playable out of the box. Previous Harley-Benton kits have had usable necks, so maybe I just got a bad copy. Apart from the frets, the neck seems really good for the price, but only time will tell whether it stays that way or starts twisting.
The worst part of the kit was the wraparound bridge: it was apparently designed without taking the thickness of the chrome plating into account, so the bridge posts did not fit into their slots at all, and the adjustable saddle bit for the G and B strings did not move without a few careful knocks with a hammer. A ridiculous amount of filing was required to get the bridge into a working condition at all. The bridge posts were also not optimally placed, so the treble-side intonation adjustment screw ran out of thread before good intonation was achieved. I will need to source a longer screw, or resort to moving the bridge posts further back.
The rest of the hardware is decent. Better tuners would be an obvious upgrade, but not an absolute requirement. The kit was also generous with screws, none were missing and there were a few spares for the small ones.
I wanted to use a specific set of pickups, so I did not try the included ones at all. There were two sets of them, though: one pair with covers, one without! The rest of the electronics worked perfectly fine, and the pots offer a nice amount of friction when turning the knobs.
In the end I am happy with the finished guitar, but with the aforementioned issues, this is not a kit anyone can put together and get a playable instrument out of. For a beginner, I would recommend the T-style kit as a probably more rewarding building experience.
){kind=logo}
