Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit Extreme-84

I bought it a few months ago, and I wanted to wait a bit before writing this review.
It's a 8.75/10, in my opinion.
Building it wasn't too complicated (I can understand German and English).
I did have some slight problems with one of the knobs, but it was my fault.
Mine came with an interesting wood pattern, so I just added 2 coats of wood oil to it, just to make it a bit darker.
It sounds pretty good with the Ernie Ball "Not Even Slinky" strings. It stays in tune for a decent amount of time, so I don't have to tune it every day.
The pickups sound very different from one another, so you can really feel the difference of volume and tone, even if you play clean or with lots of effects (good for lead to rhythm changes).
And I like that it all came in a big box with all the parts being put in separate small boxes and all the electronics being already connected to each other, so you know exactly how to mount them.

The only 2 problem I found are the grounding and the strap pins.
The grounding is made trough the bridge, so you can hear the somewhat loud buzz in the strings when playing with a clean tone. This can be slightly resolved by using a quality cable (I use one from Ibanez) and not using that cheap cable that comes with the guitar.
And the upper strap pin is mounted in a weird position, and the strap comes off very easy when playing while standing up. This can be solved by using some cheap Ernie Ball strap safety rubber discs.
What I would also recommend is taking it to a luthier after mounting it. Especially for the nut, the bridge, frets and truss rod adjustments, mostly because using your mother's or wife's nail file to lower frets isn't a good permanent fix, especially for your strings :))).
Except for this, is is a pretty good guitar for beginner to intermediate players that is fun to install and to play.

I was waiting for an EX kit since they launched the new series a few years ago. Here is my experience with the kit so far:
-Sanded the body to remove the protective coat so I could stain it the color of my licking. Decided to stain only the face, the sides, back and neck look nice natural. This took me ~5 days, finished it with shellac.
-the body is made of 4 wood pieces, the color may vary.
-Assembly took under an hour, the hardest part was hammering the bridge holder into place. Neck fits well in the pocket, all holes were drilled in the right place.
-The manual was in german, an english pdf is on the guitar page, but it is also black and white. The problem isn't the colors of the manual, but the colors of the pickup wires. In the manual they are yellow and white, but the HBZ we get have blue-red and red-red colors. I asked them via email which is the neck/bridge, they said the blue-red is the neck, but on the guitar page showcase the red-red is the neck. Also, the pickup plastic rim for the blue-red is taller so it is the bridge, not the neck. I tested the guitar sound borh ways and it is clear that the blue-red is the bridge. It would be great if a "new" model that was just launched had a manual that matched the build =).
-The pickups are great on high-gain, but on clean they have a static sound because of the grounding.
-the nut slots are cut too low for the strings we get on the kit and they buzz on the first fret, a different string gauge makes the buzz go away. I recomand making a bone nut for it and getting some quality tunners.
-Overall, I enjoy it, it made one of my dream guitars come true, HB also posted it on their Instagram story <3

Arrived in a few days, well packed. The assembly instructions was in german (but you can download the english one)
The wood pattern is very beautiful on mine so I've deicided not try to paint it.
Assembled in a couple of hours without difficulties, was a lot of fun. Setup also went smoothly. Equipped 10-46 Elixirs instead of the bundled strings.
1st impression: Wow, that's a decent guitar. Neck is comfortable, the body is light (but doesn't feel cheap), the neck dive doesn't annoy me.
Sound is decent, a bit more noisy on high gain compared to a ZW set (81/85). I'm using with a PC (2i2 gen4 -> AmpKnob or other VSTs).
1-2 weeks after:
- I've got grounding issues. Apparently filing the paint from the string holder the solved it. Still a bit more noisy in hi-gain than a 81-85, but still rocks
- Although I take good care of it, the horns seem fragile, maybe the wood is too soft. Maybe it should be varnished
- Still happy with the guitar :)

It arrived very well packaged and i sanded off the finish from the front of the guitar body and stained it a very nice red color, I chose to leave the sides and back unpainted because the wood color is very nice, assembly took about an hour and a half and the wires were not marked like the photos, the manual was in German so i had to use a translated one on my phone, had a lot of buzzing problems and adjustment but finally it sound great. Beautiful guitar nice sound, a lot of noise when using high gain. Quality is 3 stars just because of the wires not being marked and the manual being horrible, otherwise this is a nice project and a nice final product.