Harley Benton Ukulele DIY-Kit Sopran

I bought this kit for my young daughter. She has watched me build multiple guitars, and she is at an age now where I think she can start joining in on building instruments. A kit like this is perfect for anyone to start out with. Age doesn’t matter because you always want to start simple, and build up.

Pros:
1) price
2) at the end of the day, you’ll have a playable instrument
3) fun

The cons with my purchase
1) fretboard needed to be a bit wider

2) within a month, the string tension busted the wood where the bridge was. The glue didn’t come undone, the wood actually broke.

Having that happen briefly broke my daughters heart…but thankfully, her dad (me!) came to the rescue with some strong titebond wood glue, and some extra (reinforcement) wood to fix the problem.

Anyway…the guitar is now a beast. It’s strong and solid, and be of that, it sounds good. This is executed a kit like this is perfect for a beginning builder. If there isn’t any problems…great. If there is some problems…then for the price of the kit, it’s worth trying to fix and get more experience on.

This kit is a fun project but beware, unless I got a bad one you cannot just put the parts together and voilà as the manual says. You'll have to make sure all parts fit perfectly and probably make adjustments at the neck joint, bridge and nut to make sure things are really straight and have the proper height. This means you will have to know what you're doing and have some basic luthier notions and tools. Having said that the ukulele will look quite good if you use a nice color and lacquer, and the tuning machines and sound are not bad at all. It needs good strings. Don't panic if you have a lot of fret buzz after just putting the first strings on, it'll take a little while( with strings on) for the neck to get a little more relief and for the tuners to be stable.

I got this for my wife - she likes them, not sure why ..

Checking it on arrival, it was well packed and all parts were in correct shape. I bought a mandolin kit from the US a couple of years ago and it needed a lot of adjustment to get it to fit together. The Uke just went together like a dream.

It isn't solid wood and, so, doesn't have much real depth to the sound. Also, the top ply isn't all one piece - there is a join running across the waist. Thus, grain filler [at least] is needed and a solid colour has to be used.

However, the price indicates that it isn't the most serious of instruments ... suffice to say it is good fun in the making and the playing. If you like ukeles ..

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