I am a guitar player for over 25 jears and i wanted a p90 guitar.
There is not much available with p90's and a decent (not gibson like)
headstock and a tremolo, or you have to pay like more than 2000 euro's.
So i bought this Harley Benton instead.
First impression is that the wood is beautiful and high quality.
The tuners are not that nice. (they suck).
The p90's provided do not sound that great, not the sound i was expecting,
they barely make the sound of a p90.
The guitar also has a few high frets so it buzzes and rattles.
And o my god the tremolo wont stay in tune no matter wath i tried.
Even flatting it out does not solve the problems. The tremolo is unusable in my case.
So my conclusion: the wood is great, but everything else sucks.
What to do???? Modify it like there is no tomorrow.
I removed everything exept the wood (obvious) and the nut. All the rest is gone. I noticed that the pots used are 250K. For a P90 it should be 500K.
I put in some shaller M6 tuners, Bare knuckle boot camp P90's.
All new electronics: 500k CTS pots, 0,022 cap, switchcraft switch, and braided wire, and a CTS output jack.
Also a shaller 2 point vintage tremolo was added.
I did a fretjob and polish and put it all together.
And there you go, a guitar better than a PRS, with the options i chose.
I am not a guitar tech. Although i do the fretwork on all my guitars and minor repairs myself, this is my first "real" modding project.
I had no real problems with the installation of the parts.
I bought a 25 euro soldering station and leared from youtube how to do 50's style wiring.
The installation of the tremolo was the most scary.
But hey, if i fucked it up, its a 260 euro guitar and i would have bought a
new one. I measured a lot and used painters tape, a ruler and a pencil to see where it should be. I used a mill to enlarge the cavity, it was to small for the new tremolo.
During the removal of the old tremolo i noticed that the 6 screwholes are
not in line, they go up and down 4-5mm. that is why the original trem did
not stayed in tune.
The guitar is great now. It sounds much better and plays like a breeze.
The tremolo stays in tune +-2 cents. Intonation is not a problem because i measured a lot.
So i am happy with it. I learned a lot during the process.
But what are the costs for this project?
260 euro for the guitar,
189 euro for the pickups,
138 euro for the tremolo,
118 euro for the tuners,
77 euro for the electronics+ shipping
This is a total of 782 euro.
You can get a gretch semi accoustic with a bigsby for this money, but it has a Gibson style headstock so you will have tuning problems.
There are no other decent guitars with p90's a tremolo and a decent headstock available for this kind of money.
I know it is a lot of money but i would do it again. It was fun to do and i learned a lot.
Now i have the guitar i want, the guitar Harley Benton should have made
intstead of the stock one.
