Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit T-Style

Firstly, I am not a gigging guitarist. I play mainly in the bedroom and occasionally at local Jams. I use a Boss Katana amp with an ME-80 and a few other pedals.
I’ve wanted to do a self build for a while now, but was sceptical about a) whether I would be able to do a half decent job, & b) more importantly, whether the materials supplied would be any good.
When it arrived I was immediately impressed that the body was (externally) very smooth and had a nice grain. ( The workmanship on the pickup pocket routing and the control switch routing was pretty poor really, but at least is out of sight). The neck looked really good and the fret edge finish was way smoother than I was expecting for the price.

First off, I checked the neck for straightness and found that it was convex in shape by quite a bit. Easy enough to adjust with the supplied truss rod adjuster. The frets themselves were actually quite smooth at the edges, but after checking with fret rockers, seven or eight of them needed to be filed down a bit.

Now I’m no woodworker or electronic wizard so this area really concerned me. The headstock shape I chose to cut with a jig saw. On reflection a hand saw with a fine blade may have been more useful. That said, after about 3 hours hand sanding with 5 different grades of sandpaper made it nice and smooth.
The electrics were easy to connect with the supplied connectors but I first lined all the cavity’s with copper self adhesive tape.
One major flaw is that the tone pot does not work. Or, if it does, it really isn’t noticeable. (This is something I have seen in other reviews). For me it isn’t a big issue, I have plenty of pedals and effects that can overcome this.

From the outset, I wanted the finish to remain a natural (ish) wood Finish. So I was really happy that the grain on the guitar body was looking very good out of the box. I applied four coats of mid oak wood wax. This deepened the colour somewhat and I am really pleased with the finish.

The tuners seem to be of a pretty good standard, but a couple of the pre drilled holes were slightly off. The string trees look and feel a bit cheap. Most of the supplied screws and holes were ok. The neck fitted the body really well and the strings, when put on, were aligned straight down the neck. The nut is plastic I think, but experience has told me to file the back edge of the slots, just a little bit and apply some lead pencil to the slots. Once the strings had stretched a little and bedded in, it holds its tune really well.

My biggest and best surprise, was when I plugged it in. I think the sound of this build is superb for the money. I have owned far worse guitars that have cost me hundreds of pounds. The pick ups needed a small tweak to get the volume balance right, but other than that, I am really pleased with the volume and general tone of the guitar.

For £75 (from my experience) I doubt if you will find much better. Really chuffed!

An overview of how the building of my Harley Benton telecaster kit went.

Step 1: Neck
I started with checking if the frets were level. They were playable but still needed some levelling. They were also very scratchy and the top was barely crownded.
I levelled, crowned and polished the frets.
Then I cut the headstock into shape, sanded it smooth and covered it with 6 coats of clearspray.

Step 2: Body
The body was very ruff and had a lot of dings and even a few holes in it.
I sanded it until it was perfectly smooth. Then I filled the holes, scratches, dings and woodgrain with wood filler and sanded everything smooth again. Next I applied 2 layers of primer and sanded everything smooth. After this I filled al the remaining holes and scratches again with woodfiller, after this, again I sanded everything smooth. Next I spraypainted the body with 6 layers of turquoise lacker and 3 layers of satin clearcoat.

Step 3: assembly
The tuners and string trees went in perfectly with no problem. The neck fitted perfectly in the neck pocked. The bridge, output jack cover, strap buttons and the plate with the switch and knobs also fitted perfectly.
The pickguard however not so much. The holes in the body didn't align with the holes in the pickguard. I drilled new holes in the body and now it fits. The pickguard does touch the plate with the pickup selector, this is not supposed to happen.

Step 4: setup
The tuners hold tune but are a bit difficult to tune with, they are a bit jumpy.
The bridge is easy to intonate but impossible to intonate 100% perfect because of it's design, but that was to be expected.
The nut of the guitar is cut to high, because of this the action is always high and the first few frets will sound out of tune. I am going to fix the nut later.
I had to adjust the pickup height a lot.

The result:
- Even with a 9-42 set of strings this guitar is very loud acoustically. It resonates more than any guitar I have ever played.
- The pickups sound remarkably good for such a cheap kit. I dont think I will change them anytime soon.
- The guitar plays very nicely, I expect it to play even better once I lowered the nut slots.
- The guitar holds tune good enough.
- The pickup selector is wobly and stiff. The volume knob is pressed against the metal plate it's atached to, this makes it imposible to operate it with 1 finger. It has to much friction. The tone knob works perfectly.

Conclusion:
The kit I got has a very good neck and body but the hardware is lacking. The hardware is functional, you could keep it, but I am probably going to upgrade it.
I have a feeling once I upgraded it this is going to be my favourite guitar.
Score:
Body and neck 9,5/10
Hardware 5/10
Pickups 8/10
Total 7,5/10


UPDATE:
I placed straplocks, upgraded the stringtrees and the nut to graptech, changed the tuners to harley benton locking tuners, placed compensated bridge sadles and placed a fender 4-way tele switch (I discovered that the original switch used the same pickup configuration in both position 1 and 2). I also maneged to fix the hard to turn volume knob.

After these upgrades this guitar is fenomenal. It holds tune very well and is very smooth to tune, it has sustain for ages, with the 4-way switch you have a lot of tonal options and it plays like butter.
It is my favourite guitar at the moment.

Score with upgrades:
Body and neck 9,5/10
Hardware 9/10
Pickups 8/10
Total 9/10