Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit Single Cut

i bought this kit several years ago, and intended to delay the review as i wanted to see if this guitar can stand the test of time, and frequent use. so i indeed bought one, and then assembled it, and kept it in its default configuration, including the finish, since after assembly. played the guitar for years on a daily basis for hours.

okay, fast forward three years, and here's what's happened to it.

1. the frets wore out. i had to refret it using harder frets.
2. the neck bowed a bit. i was rather baffled by this because i was only using standard 10-46's. it was made more evident when i used 10-52's. so i adjusted the truss rod while there was tension on the strings, and that fixed it, but then it had a bit of back bow with the strings removed. i just surmised that probably the neck was too soft.
3. the pickups sounded muddier. this was, more or less, a perception issue, and only got resolved when i replaced them with stock epiphone pickups that i had on hand. not to say that the stock pickups were bad, but for me, i felt that they weren't good either.
4. bridge saddles wore out fairly quick. this must've been caused by my hands as they keep rubbing with the saddles as i do my palm muting. i swapped the entire bridge with an aftermarket roller bridge, and bought a harley benton tailpiece to complement it.
5. pots started becoming scratchy after a few months. since they became so, i chose to buy log pots and replaced the linear ones installed in the kit. i recycled the stock capacitor, but i also intend to replace that down the line.
6. stock tuners went all over the place. you can't make the guitar stay in tune for too long with the stock tuners. there were also dead spots when turning the pegs, and that greatly affected the tuning. i replaced them with an old set of taylor tuners that i had on hand, and that worked wonders on the tuning.

three years on, the guitar is still working, and is still in its default unfinished state. i've never laid any paint or refreshed the sealer on the wood, as i liked how it looked as a barely finished guitar. my hope is to see it work for more years to come, hopefully outliving me too.

to sum it up, it's a very good starter kit for those who want to learn how to build, play and maintain guitars. for those seeking something more robust or something that requires less maintenance, then this might not be for you.

I wanted to take a Harley Benton SC-450Plus, but since the neck is glued, I was afraid for the integrity of the guitar during transportation - it was a bad experience, I decided to take a Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit Single Cut Electric Guitar Kit SC-Style for experiments and training to play the guitar.

Before starting to build the Guitar Kit, I had to do an additional polishing of the guitar body, so. it was sanded poorly, I found 3 small defects - furrows from the grinding tool. I do not understand why the manufacturer covers the guitar body with a sealant (as it is written in the description, in fact it is some kind of varnish ), and then
finish polishing, spoiling the coating at the same time? I wish he hadn't. I had to finish polishing small defects myself. After that, I wanted to soak the stain under the mahogany, but this was prevented by the sealant applied by the manufacturer, it would be very long and difficult to remove it until the end, so I covered the guitar body in 3 layers with a transparent polyurethane varnish matte - silky. It turned out very well.

The neck was in good condition, very smooth, only the edges of the frets were sharpened so that they did not cut the fingers. Without modification, only by adjusting the anchor, it was possible to adjust the height of the strings above the 12th fret of the 1st - 1.8 and the 6th - 2 mm.
The color overlays of the Fretboard is different from the pictures on the site - it came to me in black.
Tuners have small heads, and have a backlash, to adjust the tone of the string in one movement will not work. they were disassembled and stuffed with thick silicone grease - they began to work a little better.
The upper bridge has insufficient cuts, they had to be deepened a little to adjust the height of the string above the 1st fret.

The strings were immediately put by Harley Benton Value string sEL 9-42, the strings are normal, no worse than the d'addario from the set on the HB-35 Plus, the winding is tight, the sound is pleasant, the mood is kept. I haven't put the strings from the kit yet, I can't say anything about them, but they look the same as HB EL 9-42, only the
lower ball of the string holder with a hole diameter is slightly larger.

Humbuckers disassembled and brought out the ends wire with a shielded wire, for coil split.
The total resistance of the each Humbuckers is about ~ 10.6 kOhm, each coil is ~ 5.3 kOhm.
The volume controls should be A500K and the timbre B500K-they are mixed up in places, just like on my other HB-35Plus guitar (the Chinese assemblers do not understand this).
The Volume controls were replaced with the A500K with push/pull function for coil split, and the Tone controls with the B500K with push/pull function for change phase.

The frames of the humbuckers do not correspond to the curvature of the top, their bottom had to be polished.

After completion finishing KIT's "file", the assembly of the guitar was no longer particularly difficult, except for soldering the electrical part of the humbuckers, regulators and switches. Here I had to turn on the brain and check different options for turning on the pick-up coils.
The following coil switching modes were made: - humbucker, split-coil, parallel-coil, change phase-coil.

The result is a Les Paul type guitar, in a natural wood color with a very interesting sound.I like the sound, you can do any timbre like on a Stratocaster with singles like on a sitar, or Les Paul, or a muddy 60s sound. Sustain is surprisingly good for neck bolt in. The guitar is not heavy and comfortable. Playing the rhythm and solos on it is a pleasure, bends and vibrato are easy to do.

I want to thank the Thomann team for the pleasure they gave me when assembling the Guitar KIT, the kit turned out to be quite good for self-assembly, but somewhat expensive
against the background of the finished Harley Benton SC-200 BK Student Series guitar, which became even cheaper, which is very strange, given the shortcomings of the kit:
insufficient quality and precision of manufacturing the components of the set, the need to refine and self-assemble the guitar. Please take this into account and draw the right conclusions.

I bought this kit to learn about guitar, try out different setups, change stuff here and there and try to fix something on my own. And this kit is solid thing for that. In my personal view it's a 4 star kit that can be changed to 5 star guitar with some work on your own.
So let me rate it like this after playing for some time
Tuners - 3 /5 - regular tuners, does the job but some are stiffer, some are weaker , other than that they work
Nut - 4/5 - pretty solid slots , (A) string seem bit too low, so I might change to new nut someday, but it's decent - usable and playable
Fretboard - 4 / 5 - It's smooth, don't really feel much of a sharp fret ends and they are pretty great up until 12 fret - after that definitely need some work to be done to set decent action .
Body - 5 / 5 - amazing body, smooth, no holes or scratches , pretty beautiful looking . Knobs fit well and looks good too
Cavity covers - 4 / 5 - both slightly out of shape just as the screw holes for them
Pickups - 3,5 / 5 - they not bad, they sound pretty good and like les paul should, but they also are pretty weak . I needed to crank up my amp settings way more than I do on any other guitar.

Overall it's a beautiful guitar, You get what you paid for and with some work and good setup it will be amazing axe to have fun! P.S. - The base setup after assembling the kit was actually good !! Just not my preferred one

Here's the final result and description of the process:



Unfortunately, the front pliers were kinda ugly...not a nice top as in the picture. That said the end results came out awesome.

If you plan to stain the wood as I did, be aware that the wood sealer will be a PAIN to sand down. (would be better if they provided kits without any sealer) ..is specially difficult on the sides.

Overall, after sanding the wood has responded nicely to the dye, no problems at all with that. Went for Turquoise on the front and Red on the back, quite nice!

The neck is quite good! thin and the wood is quite robust. The hardware is also good, but I'm replacing the tuners with Grovers.

The bridge, well...really not the best, you can see is gonna catch the string after a bend....so I'm replacing it with a Göldo roller bridge. Be aware that the Göldo comes with smaller studs, so you'll need to redrill or fill the gap with something (I'm gonna use bits from a hose from a talkbox, it works perfectly)

I'm right now in the lacking process, so I cannot review the sound yet....I expect it to be more or less like my vintage Harley Benton which sounds lovely.

UPDATE:

I just finished the project.

Some tips:

- The nut comes REAL high! I suggest you to get a ruler and measure your best set guitar, take the nut out of the neck of this kit and carefully sand it down until is right...DONT TOUCH THE SLOTS they're perfect, is only the nut that is pretty high...otherwise you'll have intonation problems mostly on the first fret.

Hell, is almost impossible to properly play a bar chord at the first fret if you don't do that, after the nut is lowered the guitar plays like heaven.

- Try to avoid using the tuners and bridge that comes with it. They're simply not the best (good but there are better). Get a Göldo roller bridge and some Grover mini tuners.

- Use a piece of guitar string to be able to easily pass the cables that goes from the control cavity to the switch cavity.

- Don't forget to ground the electronics to the strings via the ground cable that goes to the bridge stud.

- Mark the cables before unplugging the switch. If you get lost install it all and plug the guitar then use a piece of metal (rounded small wrench works) and carefully tap the pickups to know whats going on until is right.

- Don't forget to lub the nut with graphite.

UPDATE: I've installed a locking nut and a Schaller stoptail with microtuners. Best decision ever!

UPDATE 2: Changed the original pickups which are very dull to a pair of Seymour Duncan hot rodded kit. They sound awesome.

I ordered this kit as I wanted a les paul type guitar, and the normal suspects are above my price range. I was pleasantly surprised by this.

Shipping was quick.. about a week from Germany to my home in rural Lincolnshire UK. Packaging was robust and the kit was unscathed.

The neck is to die for. Frets appear level and no sprouting fret ends. Straight and smooth. The body seemed well routed but needed sanding in some areas. It comes with a thin finish that will need clearing if you want to stain it. I have not put any finish on at the moment as it looks great unfinished. The binding is very nice.

My kit came with no assembly instructions and the cavity cover was the wrong shape. I assembled without instructions getting guidance from you tube and thomman are sending a new back plate. So good aftercare.

It took about 2 hours to assemble. Neck fit was good but the electronics were a bit tough to work out at the pickup selector but got there with some trial and error amd the quick connectors helped. . I really like the final result. I put on some Ernie ball super slinkies as the strings supplied were poor quality and the pickups drive the sound well. I think they are about 10.5 in terms of output and through my valve marshall sound great. Clean sounds are chimey and sweet sounding.

If you want a little project you can't go wrong. The guitar once assembled punches above its weight amd competes with every epiphone I have ever played. At a 300 quid saving you can't go wrong. I would happily gig with this guitar.

Harley Benton makes some of the best, most reasonably priced DIY kits out there. Add in the cost of shipping to the states and it's STILL a better value than most of our domestically available kits.

The parts are mostly of decent quality, save for the strings and the instrument cable (still handy tho). I did some basic finishing on the wood and then threw it together, strings and all. Performed a quick setup (tune, relief, PU height, intonation) and it sounded great. It's not a Gibson, but it plays as well as a Squier I've got as long as both have been set up to play.

For a very reasonable price you get a well made kit that will provide hours of joy just putting it together. Set it up well (or have someone help) and it plays better than most would believe. From there, you decide! Level and finish the frets, swap out the pickups (why not?!?!), throw in some wiring mods and no one will believe it's a kit.

As a side note, being a mass production guitar kit you can find replacement parts (pick guards, plates, covers etc.) fairly easily. Just make sure to measure first!

The guitar overall was ok , but some annoying issues, like the holes for the back posts being off centre, also the bridge posts needed a "love tap"to fit the wraparound bridge.
The holes for the tuning pegs should have been placed in line, but definately not wider (bass E is closer to the centre than A or D) so now the strings tough each other, easy thing to change in the design, but never done.
It is ok for the price and worth the money. But to someone who is quite OCD towards misalignment it is not the best.
Edit: the quality of the wiring is really sub par, it basically falls apart. Never seen anything like it, I ordered wiring etc for this now.
But really that should improve

I really love these guitar kits, worth every penny. I do music few times a week to make my rent.

When these kits are assembled (carefully), they're a nice piece of kit, they sound and play better than a ready built guitar at up to four or five the price, they look much better too, with all the fancy extras & trim.

I did the telecaster kit a while back, which almost fell together on my kitchen table. It looks sounds & plays so good, without problems or replacement parts at all.

This LP is every bit as good as the Telle I built. I prefer it to my real & genuine LP.. I like the natural wood finish straight from the box & use it just like that. It also plays (when my aged fingers allow) just as good as my original LP.

Then I messed with wiring from from online electric guitar sites & now have some sweet sounds from push, pull tone & volume knobs which swap pickup polarity &, or "cut" to single coil p'ups, my favorite sound is from all the pickups in series, all good fun when out with the band hitting the audience with "new, unheard" guitar sounds.

This particular LP kit was a little awkward, pickup screw holes did not line up, only needed re'drilling, also the wiring had an earth link missing, it all worked OK, but knowing there was more, I visited stewmac.com for some wicked wiring diagram ideas.

So don't screw the pickups down until you get the strings on so you can center the pickups using the strings as a guide, then screw them down.

This guitar kit now looks, plays & sounds great, although I do have a genuine Gibson LP guitar, the Gibson is very heavy compared with this HB kit guitar, apart from that there's little difference HB has a bolt on neck which I prefer, because it is easily adjustable, or replaceable. The Gibson has a integral neck which is neither easily adjustable or replaceable.

There is everything but a plectrum in the box. Do read the "setup" section in the book as this will help understand how all electric guitars need setting up regularly for sound and play'ability, although neither of mine needed much setting up at all.

A very important part of most LP's, genuine or not, is the NUT LUBRICANT, graphite or silicone grease. This stops the "usual" tuning problems associated with the Gibson shape (back angled) head stock.

I bought this a few months ago as a mod platform and am really happy with the results. The body and neck are well constructed, although I found the neck pocket needed some filing down to make the neck sit straight with the body.

The fingerboard seems nicely finished. I didn't need to clean up any of the frets. The neck has a smooth satin feel to it and is quite thin so easy to play. The nut is a fairly cheap plastic thing and the one on mine was glued in quite high, so I needed to file slots down quite a bit to get decent intonation on the lower frets.

I haven't used any of the stock hardware in my build, just the body and neck. I've installed a Schaller bridge & tailpiece and Schaller locking tuners with a String Butler. I've also replaced the stock humbuckers with EMG "Het" active pickups.

All the unused parts have gone into my spares box, so I can't really say what they're like.

Overall, I enjoyed working on the guitar set as a project. It has definitely given me confidence to know there are certain things I can do while helping me acknowledge there are some things I wouldn't be confident in doing.

My main disappointment is that I didn't realize there is a YouTube community of guitar builders who build their own guitars every year and I made mine before I could take part in this years' challenge! I might have to think about doing another one next year, as long as Thomann are still promoting the challenge!